Welcome to the 2025-2026 KingCo Season!

Oct22

We’ll be starting play this year on Monday, November 17 at 4:30 p.m. at Interlake High School. Registrations are due by Wednesday, November 12 at 5 p.m.

Did your school not receive a registration invite? Please let me know by adding a comment to this account that includes your school-based e-mail address. Alternatively, a contact name and school can likely suffice as well.

(Current as of Friday, 11/7, 7:44 a.m.)
Registered Teams: 7
Bellevue
Interlake (2)
Juanita
Newport (2)
Tesla STEM

Registered Players: 33
Players from:
Bellevue (10)
Interlake (13)
Juanita (4)
Newport (6)

KingCo Dominant at State!

Mar3

Here’s what I managed to capture, and apologies for anyone I missed!

All-Comer Awards

All-Comer Reserve:
2nd place: Ender Ramsby (Tesla STEM), 5/6

All-Comer Premiere:
Upset Prize: Adiranga Setlur (Bellevue), 458 rating points!
2nd place: Ethan Ao (Newport), 5/6 and undefeated!

State Team Event:

Individual All-Stars:
Aayan Hetamsaria (International) 5.0/6
Devansh Sharma (Tesla STEM) 5.0/6
Kenneth Yuodelis (Newport) 5.0/6

Austin Liu (Skyline) 5.5/6
Austin Deng (Newport) 5.5/6
Danny Kang (Newport) 5.5/6

2nd place: Skyline, 23.0/30 (4A State Champs) and tied the first place team in their 5th round match!
3rd place: Newport, 20.5
4th place: Interlake: 20.0
5th place: Tesla STEM, 20.0 (2A State Champs)
10th place: Bellevue, 17.5
13th place: Eastside Prep, 16.5 (1A State champs)
26th place: International, 14.0

Time Control Change for Next Year

At the State Coaches’ Meeting, coaches nearly unanimously agreed to change the time control from G/60, d/5 to G/60+5 (so from a 5 second delay to a 5 second increment). KingCo plans to adopt this change for league play next season.

To illustrate the difference, suppose you have 7 seconds left on your clock and make a move in one second:

  • If you have a five second delay, those extra 4 seconds of delay are lost, and you still have 7 seconds on your clock.
  • If you have a five second increment, those extra 4 seconds for the move are added to your clock, so you’ll now have 11 seconds on your clock.

Possible Schedule Changes?

We thought having our last regular season meet on the Monday of the State Team week made for a long week of chess, and we’re looking at making some potential changes to avoid this in the future. Some ideas we’re discussing:

  • Changing the starting date to be earlier in November (possibly as early as the first week of November).
  • Changing the day of the week from Monday to either Tuesday or Thursday.
  • Reducing the number of rounds of KingCo play, which would mean a change of format some years.

Players, do you have a strong opinion? We’ll do a coaches’ survey of preferred options sometime in April, be sure to speak up to your advisor about which of these options is best!

KingCo Matches Postponed – February 3

Feb3

While no school has closed today, nor have any cancelled after-school activities, we do have questions about whether we can compete today.

The current thought is to run a double round on Monday, February 10, at a shorter time control. More details will be available on-site on the 10th.

KingCo Matches Postponed – November 25

Nov25

Due to school closures and delays throughout the KingCo area, matches will not be played on Monday, November 25. Unless coaches decide something differently, we will be utilizing the makeup day on Monday, February 24.

Hopefully, everyone is staying safe and warm, and we’ll be back for more chess on Monday, December 2 with our Round 2 schedule.

[EDITED to add: Round 1 board results are also up, but I didn’t want to bury this post. Monday, November 25, 2:59 p.m.]

Inclement Weather Policy

Nov22

This is probably a good time to remind all league teams of our inclement weather policy.

Our league cancels matches for the week if any of our member districts/schools closes or cancels after school activities.

These are the following groups to look out for (with school names within districts in parentheses)

  • Bellevue (Bellevue, Interlake, International, Newport)
  • Issaquah (Liberty, Skyline)
  • Lake Washington (Tesla STEM)
  • Northshore (Bothell)
  • Private (Eastside Prep)

Coaches, captains: please don’t hesitate to reach out if you hear of closures or cancellations in your area, which may be known to you before they’re to the main public. I’ll post here as soon as I can when I’ve heard about a cancellation that impacts our league play.

Updates Today

Nov19

Updates today include Round 1 match results, Round 2 pairings, and the Standings page. I also have formally published our long since informal Tiebreak Procedures.

KingCo Chess again strong at state!

Mar4

Despite a smaller league size this year, KingCo Chess again represented well at State.

Interlake finished with 21 points and in 2nd place, and was the only team at State to beat the eventual champs from Lakeside. A last-round loss to Newport A took them out of the lead that they had going into the final round.

The KingCo Champs from Newport also fared well at State. The A team finished with 20 points and in 3rd place, losing only to the champs. Their B team finished with 18.5 points, but only one team per school is eligible for a trophy, but they were just two places behind their A team.

Juanita took home some hardware (11th place trophy) in their first full season back with the league. They defeated fellow KingCo member Eastside Prep in a last-round match where the winner had a good shot at a trophy and the loser would fall just outside.

And finishing with the same score as Eastside Prep, keep an eye on Liberty, who should hopefully be joining the league next year.

Full standings for teams are here: http://whsca.org/pdf/2024-Final-Team-Standings.pdf

In the All-Comers, Aichen Qiu of Interlake defeated everyone en route to a perfect 6-0 score, while Artur Jokela of Juanita finished with an undefeated 5-1 score to win the All Comers Under 800.

Congrats to all of the KingCo schools and individual participants, and hopefully, we’re back to our usual size next season!