The Philadelphia area has a chess champion once again as International Master Thomas Bartell captured the 2015 Delaware Valley Open Chess Championship on October 17-18. After a year’s hiatus the tournament returned at its new venue, St. Joseph’s University. Bartell defeated all of his opponents in the competition which lasted about 8 hours over the weekend. Also crowned were Top school, J.R. Masterman and Top club, Dark Knights, which narrowly edged out the Main Line Chess Club.

Some of our top scholastic finishers included Nalin Khanna, a young Expert from Masterman who finished 2nd place to Bartell in the Championship. Other top scholastic players included Khanna’s school mates: Torin Kuehnle (Top player Under 1900) and Manas Narula & Harrison Sanford, both of whom tied for 1st in the Reserve (Under 1600) section. Joining Narula and Sanford in the winner’s circle of the Reserve section was Eliah Patterson of the Dark Knights. His teammate Mark Frazier won Top Under 1400 honors.

The Booster (Under 1200) section was swept by Andrew Fan of the Main Line chess club. Fan recorded the only 5-0 score in the tournament en route to the Booster title. (IM Bartell took a 3rd round half point bye) The tournament was organized by the Delaware Valley Chess Company, which runs chess clubs for local schools and tournaments for the community throughout the Philadelphia area.