Maryland State Scholastic Chess Championships 2026 Flash Report

Nearly 600 chess players from kindergarten through 12th grade participated in the MD State Scholastic Chess Championship last weekend at Hammond High School.  Players ranged from a kindergartner in their first tournament to a FIDE Master in high school!

You can see the US Chess ratings report here and the team standings here.  We were also joined by special guest Danny Rensch, who did a lesson, Q and A, and a book signing!

The tournament has grown each year since 2022.  The "under" sections play in the gym along with K-1 Championship, while the older Championship sections play in a separate space.

K-1 Results

The kindergarten and first grade state championship was won by Kai Cao from Manor Woods Elementary!  In the final championship game, they were the last two players in the group still playing.

The K-1 U400 section was won by Damian Pescatore and Lucas Desta.  Fulton won the team competition with Damian, Luc Nguyen, and Jason Lee, followed by the Norwood School in 2nd place led by Abbey Zhang, Fyodor Shestakov, Freya Ji, and William Wu:

Primary School

The Primary School (2nd and 3rd grade) Championship had it's own space this year:

Co-Champions: Shlok Srivastava from Oakdale Elementary (who defended his individual title) and Stella Cao from Manor Woods, with Stella getting the invitation to the Ashley Tournament of Champions on tiebreaks.  Stella and her little brother both won state Championships!

Here's a nice mate and 3 tactic she played - can you find it?

Oakdale repeated as team champions with Shlok, Gopal Komatlapalli, and Mahesh Kollipara, and Manor Woods took second place with Stella, Owen Zhao, and Nidish Panjamurthy.

In PS U600, Sadhvik Karri, Sebastian Tucker, and Abirami Mohan all tied for first going 5-0, with Travilah winning the team championship led by Sebastian, Gavin Scheffres, Alexander Zhong, and Jedi Huang.  Worthington took second place led by Taashvi Magesh, Surya Hampapur, Benjamin Sun, and Brody Kramer.

Elementary School

In the Elementary School sections (4th and 5th grader), the championship section had co-champions with Caden Liu from Beverly Farms and Lakshya Mahajan from Centennial Lane tying for first, with Caden getting first place and the invitation to the Rockefeller Tournament of Champions on tiebreaks.

Centennial Lane won the team state championship with Lakshya and Alice Davis, and Green Valley took second with Aarush Srivasta and Nayan Chintalapati.  Here's a nice tactic Caden found (though there are multiple winning lines in the position):

And here's Lakshya's winning tactic in his final game (again, there are a few ways to win):

In the ES U-800 section, Evan Antaniuk and Blake Maxwell tied for first, with Gilman School taking the team honors led by George Zarukaev, Rayan Bansal, Samuel Mon, and Cameron Cappolla.  Manor Woods took second with Khevansh Hasti, Harold Walter, Vishwajith Panjamurthy, and Yashyan Tummapala, and Essex Elementary took third and looked sharp doing it, led by Jason Montoya, Bentley Davis, Liam Lowery, and Dante Duran:

Middle School

Svetoslav Fedorov from Tilden Middle won the state Middle School Championship and the invitation to the Barber Tournament of Champions with a clean 5-0 record!

Here's one of his best games:

Takoma Park Middle School took 1st place in the championship section, led by runner up and last year's ES state champion Steven Liu and Joseph Tan.  Middle School U-1000 was a tie between John Marshall Lund and Samuel Willis, who both went 5-0.  Roland Park EMS won the team competition in U-1000 led by Abel Miller, Jack Zakamski, Ryan Rawlings Chesterton, and Noah Tallamraju.  Robert Frost took second with Samuel, Artem Podlesny, Ted Monger, and Solees Sevugan.

High School

Nitesh Cherukuri, a 9th grade FM from the McDonough School won the state high school championship and the invitation to the Denker Tournament of Champions by winning clear first!

In the team competition, Wooton HS won, led by Siddharth Kurup, Brandon Chen, and Shuai Sheng.  Baltimore Polytechnic took second place with Seeger Lefstei, Benjamin Grimaldi, and Khadim Elias Fall.

Harsh Kumar, a senior from Northwest High School took second place after entering as the 24th seed!  There's no upset prize, but if there was, he'd have won it three times!

In HS U-1200, Jerome Phillip Brown from Baltimore Polytechnic took clear 1st winning all five games.  The team competition was won by South River HS with Owen Boyle, Mico Gray Rivera, Virgil Wang, and Kellen Sweet.  The runner up was Northwest HS (picture below), led by Aleksei Izbiakov, Zakir Siddeeq Rasheed, Ansu L Seesay, and Joe Essomo.