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KingCo Chess League Week 5 Update:
Only five weeks in our regular season, and Interlake A won the KingCo regular season title in rather anticlimactic fashion, with a 5-0 drubbing of their D team.
Redmond looked well on their way to locking up second place in the league, but stumbled a bit with a 3-2 loss to Bellevue.
The race was on for the final two spots in the Championship Round Robin. Issaquah A made a huge statement early with a 5-0 defeat of their own B team. Mercer Island made their case with a 4-1 win over Bothell. Overlake also tried to get into the conversation with a 3-2 win over Interlake C.
Two matches were still quite unclear quite late. Interlake B looked better much of the match before eventually falling 3-2 to Skyline. Meanwhile, ICS and Eastlake were deadlocked 2-2 before 3rd board Rohan Bhatt of Eastlake created a nifty little mating net in the N+Ps ending over ICS’s Eli Smith.
This created a tie for the final spot in the Round Robin between Eastlake and Bellevue, setting up a blitz playoff when we realized the unthinkable had happened: three of Bellevue’s five players went home! Eastlake won the blitz tiebreak by forfeit, and hopefully will send a much-needed lesson about sticking around for tiebreaks.
In the KingCo playoffs, four teams will square off for the first four places:
(1) Interlake A [23/25], (2) Redmond [16/25], (3) Issaquah A [14.5/25], (4) Eastake [13.5/25]. They’ll play a round-robin over the next three matches for the right to be called the KingCo Champion.
To determine the remaining playoff berths, a double-elimination “bracket” (it’s not strictly a bracket) features the following Round 1 matchups:
(12) Bothell [4.0] versus (5) Bellevue [13.5]
(8) Mercer Island [12.5] versus (9) Skyline [12.0]
(The winners of these two matches face-off in a winner-to-state match, while the losers of these two matches face-off in a loser-out match.)
(7) ICS [12.5] versus (10) Interlake B [12.0]
(11) Issaquah B [5.5] versus (6) Overlake [12.5]
(The winners of these two matches face-off in a winner-to-state match, while the losers of these two matches face-off in a loser-out match.)
Team pages and more tiebreak information is available at kingcochessleague.wordpress.com.