On April 13th an epic battle took place for the overall Minnesota State Chess Championship. FM Sammy Narayanan & IM Sean Nagle competed in a 5-game tie-breaking match. After an 11+ hour demonstration of brilliant fighting chess by both players, Sammy prevailed in the final seconds of the Game 5 Armageddon format to defend his title and repeat as our 2024 Minnesota State Champion.
View the Games ♟️ USCF Results 🔥 Read Part 1 ➡️
The format for the tie-breaking match under MSCA guidelines was two classical time control games followed by two rapid games. Sean won game 1 and Sammy took game 2 to even the score. Then in games 3 and 4 the rapid games were both drawn in frantic finishes that came down to seconds on the clocks and nearly king vs king drawn positions on the board.
The Armageddon game was close throughout and Sammy's passed c-pawn finally prevailed in the closing seconds of a Queen endgame to give him the title. Congratulations to both Sammy & Sean as they put on a great show for the fans at the Castle Chess Club and also for the the fans at home following the broadcasted action live via the use of DGT boards. It was also a great demonstration of fighting chess for our top MN scholastic players as the K-12 Denker and K-8 Barber playoffs were being conducted concurrently to Sammy & Sean's State Championship Match.
