Chess 4 Charity Gets Checkmate Against Childhood Disease

FAIRFAX, VA – Chess 4 Charity held our most recent charity chess tournament on Saturday, April 6, 2019 at the JCC in Fairfax, Virginia. It was a huge success!

We had almost 50 chess players, almost two dozen sponsorsand an estimated 200 peoplein attendance!

With this event, we raised almost $7,000 for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. With all our events combined, Chess 4 Charity has now raised over $50,000 for children’s charities. Thanks to everyone who donated, sponsored, bid on silent auction items, and bought food and raffle tickets at our snack bar. If you haven’t yet donated this year, it’s not too late to donate now to help us reach our goal, with just a couple clicks at www.Chess4Charity.org.

Chess 4 Charity was created by kids, for kids. This event was planned and run by kids.

We started when we were in grade school, and we like to say "even little kids can make a big difference". If you are interested in learning how you can do something similar to make a difference, see below where we talk about inspiration.

Our most important metric of success, however, is not dollars or attendance - it's smiles! Everyone had a terrific time, and there were lots of beaming smiles.

Follow Us to Learn About Future Events:

If you are interested in learning more about us or attending future events, sign up to receive updates from us on our website at www.Chess4Charity.org, and follow us on Twitter (@Chess4Charity) and Facebook (Chess4Charity/).

Tournament Winners:

There were three different “sections” or mini tournaments, one for beginners (nonrated players), an intermediate section (for US Chess Federation (USCF) rated players with a rating under 1600), and an advanced or “Open” tournament (for the highest USCF rated players). The top three finishers in each section won a trophy.

In the Open section, there was a three-way tie, with the top three players all finishing with 3 wins out of 4 very tough, competitive games. With the official USCF tiebreakers, congrats to the winners who finished in this order:

1. Greg Acholonu

2. Garrett Heller, TJ High

3. Sam Schenk, HB Woodlawn High

In the U1600 or intermediate section, congrats to these winners:

1. Owen Levine, Wakefield Forest ES

2. Samuel He, homeschool

3. Guy Cardwell, GW Middle School

In the nonrated section, congrats to:

1. Giorgio Ascoli

2. Jonah Ascoli, Willow Springs ES

3. Albert Huang, TJ High

There were also prizes for other accomplishments, too. There was a three-way tie for top finishing player in grades K-3, between Isaac Olson, Charlotte Levine and Arjun Khemani. Winning top for K-6 was Kingston Ho. And there was a tie for Top Girl, between Sara Goldstein and Lauren Aliferis. Roope Kettunen took home the prize for top finisher rated under 1000. Hunter Aiken took the prize for top under 800. All players also took home a participation medal and other giveaways. Special thanks goes to one of our sponsors, the Fairfax County Association for the Gifted (FCAG) for donating all the trophies, prizes and other parting gifts. The kids (and even the adults) really appreciated these items.

Simul:

After the main tournament was a “simul” – where professionals play multiple games simultaneously against all challengers. We had 17 players in our simul, simultaneously playing against volunteers Women’s Grand Master (WGM) Jennifer Yu, the US Women’s reigning chess champ, International Master (IM) Praveen Balakrishnan, Chess 4 Charity co-founder & Candidate Master (CM) Garrett Heller, and National Master (NM) Evan Ling. Thanks to them all for their help and participation.

Chess Coaching:

All the chess experts from the Simul, plus several other experts also volunteered their time during the tournament between rounds to go over the games with the kids so they could learn what they did right, what they did wrong, and get some instant real time feedback and coaching. These additional volunteers included chess coach Greg Acholonu from GCA Children’s Chess, and student volunteers and 1stCategory Chess Experts Camden Wiseman & Sam Schenk. These volunteers, as well as student volunteer Roope Kettunen, also helped us set up and clean up. Thanks to them all for their help and hard work.

Inspiration for Others:

We raised money through registration fees, donations, sponsorships, silent auction, raffle tickets and snack bar sales. Chess 4 Charity co-founders Gabrielle Heller (Gabby) & Garrett Heller planned, organized and ran the event, and Gabrielle Heller ran the snack bar too. Now that Gabby has her driver’s license, we were able to go buy supplies and go make sales pitches to potential sponsors without depending on our parents for a ride! Yes, this event was planned and run by kids. Other kids can do it too. Here's how....

Our second most important metric of success is inspiration. Through our tournaments, we hope to inspire other kids (and parents) to do similar charity work, whether by volunteering with us, holding their own events, or simply giving back to the community in their own way. Based on the feedback from kids and parents alike, we think we succeeded here too. Many people approached us at the event asking how they can help us, or how they could do something similar.

We want Chess 4 Charity to live on after we leave for college. The founders of Chess 4 Charity are in high school now and will be leaving for college in a few years. We need someone to take the mantle and keep Chess 4 Charity going after we leave. It’s fantastic experience – it’s like running your own business. So, any of you future entrepreneurs or if you are interested in going to business school, this might be a great fit for you. If you are a younger student who might be interested, this is a great time to get involved, because you can work with us together on a few events before we’re gone, to learn the ropes, then be well prepared to do it yourself someday. Please let us know if you're interested in working with us on future events.

We’re also in the process of expanding Chess 4 Charity events to other locations.

• We already have a Chess 4 Charity branded event planned in New York City, on May 5. See www.chess4charitynyc.org.
• We’re also in early discussions with others in Boston, Atlanta, Cleveland, and Arizona about the possibility of future events there.
• If you or someone you know might be interested in holding a Chess 4 Charity event, please talk to us.

Thank You’s and Shout Outs:

We could not do this alone. As noted above, we have many people to thank for our success.

We literally could not have held the tournament without our volunteer Tournament Director (TD), Karl Peterson. He has generously been volunteering to run our tournaments for several years and we are eternally grateful.

Big thanks to WGM Jennifer Yu, US Women’s Chess Champ, for coming to our event. Her appearance was a big hit, and many kids and parents alike were excited to meet her and take selfies with her and get autographs. She also signed a couple of special Chess 4 Charity branded chess sets, so be sure to look out for these for sale at our future fundraising events!! We were very happy to see a good turnout of girls at the tournament, possibly more so than usual. Perhaps that was in part due to Jennifer Yu’s appearance?

Thanks to everyone who came and/or donated! We appreciate you!

Huge thanks to all of our generous sponsors. A list of all of our generous sponsors is further below. As you might notice from the list of sponsors below, Chess 4 Charity now has international reach! When we started publicizing the event on our Twitter feed, we received unsolicited donations from around the country and even around the world with items for our silent auction and raffle! The Texas Women’s Chess Club reached out and donated several generous items. The famous chess photographer and author, David Llada, saw our tweets from Azerbaijan and donated a copy of his chess photo coffee table book! An Israeli startup, DecodeChess reached out to us, unsolicited, to donate subscriptions to their services for our auction. We were so shocked, humbled and impressed by this national and international generosity!

We had a record number of sponsors, including the following:

Gold Sponsors:

• Fairfax County Association for the Gifted (FCAG) donated all the trophies and medals, small chess sets to give out as other prizes and chess keychains for everyone! They also helped publicize the event, helping us get the message to kids at schools we have never reached before.
• Lombardi’s & Church Street Pizza, in Vienna, Virginia, donated all the pizza for the snack bar. They have been a long-time donor and supporter of Chess 4 Charity for many years. The same owner also owns the Vienna Inn, so stop by or order from any of these restaurants and tell them we sent you!
• The Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Fairfax, donated the fantastic space and supplied the helpful and friendly staff to assist at the venue.
• Math Reasoning Summer Camp, by Vern Williams, donated attendance for 1 person free of charge at his summer camp class! Mr. Williams is a great math teacher and former teacher of the year!
• GCA Children’s Chess by Greg Acholonu. Mr. Acholonu played in the tournament (and won), volunteered between rounds, donated a private chess lesson for the silent auction and made a cash donation too!

Silver Sponsors:

• House of Staunton donated one of our most highly bid on auction items, a beautiful blue wooden ”grandmaster” chess set
• Silver Knights, a very popular chess enrichment company, donated chess classes for the auction
• AutoScandia auto repair in Herndon, Virginia, for high end import vehicles has been a consistent repeat sponsor and friend of Chess 4 Charity.
• California Pizza Kitchen of Tysons’ Corner donated dinner for SIX people for the second tournament in a row!
• Jennifer Shahade, chess player, media personality, author, and editor in chief of the Chess.com blog, donated autographed books and a private chess lesson
• Decode Chess is innovative new chess engine analysis software, that tells not only analyzes your game to tell you the optimal next move, but also explains to you in plain English WHY the suggested move is recommended
• The Texas Women’s Chess Club donated several nice items

Bronze Sponsors:

• Outside GC - a Virtual Law Firm
• Absolute Academy - Academic Enrichment Camps
• The Capital Grille of Tysons’ Corner

Other Sponsors:

• David Llada, world famous chess photographer and author donated a copy of his beautiful book of chess photography
• WGM Sabina Foisor, the 2017 US Women’s Chess Champ and speaker at our 2017 event, donated autographed memorabilia
• Giant Foods of Vienna
• Trader Joes of Falls Church,
• Taco Bamba of Vienna

About Chess 4 Charity:

Chess 4 Charity was founded by kids Gabrielle Heller & Garrett Heller in 2011. We’ve been running semi-annual charity chess tournaments every other year. This past event was our 6thmajor event. We’ve been covered in local and national news – check out the News tab on our website.

It’s not too late to donate now or learn more about us at www.Chess4Charity.org.