Korobov Wins Sunway Sitges Alongside Entertaining Tiebreaks

Leading the tournament from start to finish, Anton Korobov of Ukraine won the 5,000-euro first prize at the Sunway Sitges tournament. A series of entertaining blitz tiebreaks decided the lower prizes.

After his fine performance at the Grand Chess Tour event in Bucharest, Korobov also did quite well in Sitges. His 6/6 start was the foundation for his tournament victory.

After his draw with Vassily Ivanchuk in round seven, Korobov was still half a point ahead of the pack. Two players were trailing him: Vasif Durarbayli of Azerbaijan and Abhimanyu Puranik of India.

A draw with Durarbayli was enough for Korobov to keep the lead as Puranik lost his game in round eight. The leader's new opponent for the penultimate round was the American youngster Awonder Liang, who had surprisingly defeated Ivanchuk.

"I was already very happy when I saw the pairings," Liang said later on the live broadcast. "If you told me I would play Ivanchuk like any time in my life, that would just be amazing. That was why I came here, to be able to play great players like him."

To beat the other strong Ukrainian was too much to ask for Liang. Playing a Grand Prix Attack setup, the American's thematic pawn push f4-f5 was not correct as all ideas with Bh6 would be easy for Black to parry. Korobov said he was planning to sacrifice the exchange, and all of his remaining pieces would be strong while White wouldn't have a clear plan.

With his special kind of humor, Korobov discussed this game in the studio on the final day, after he had drawn his last-round game with German GM Andreas Heimann.

The other big difference is how Stober deals with players finishing in a tie. Many open tournaments don't have a playoff, but having playoffs for second to eighth places is definitely rare. Only the Sants Open in Barcelona is an event we can think of that does something similar.

Adding to the show element, these tiebreaks are held outside on a terrace in front of the hotel with palm trees and the Mediterranean Sea as a splendid backdrop for a few dozen spectators.

For these tiebreaks only the top eight of the final standings were eligible play. Therefore, seven players were involved (as Korobov had ended clearly first). Before Durarbayli and Rasmus Svane played for second place, Heimann and Puranik had played with Amin Tabatabaei (Iran), Li Di (China) and Timur Gareyev (U.S.) for places four to eight.

Westside students share coding expertise with local dignitaries

While video and computer games capture of the interest of many young kids, the designing process that goes into them is something Angleton ISD Assistant Superintendent Adam Stephens wants to emphasize as a part of a growing computer science and engineering world.

During Computer Science Education Week, fifth-grade students at Westside Elementary took an hour of class time to meet with local dignitaries, including County Judge Matt Sebesta, Superintendent Phil Edwards and Angleton Mayor Jason Perez, to take part in coding activities.

“In order to get more students and community members excited about computer science, the national nonprofit Code.org is encouraging students to complete one hour of coding,” Stephens said. “It’s done through the lens of cute games, kind of fun, interactive activities, and it uses block-based coding, which is entry-level coding.”

The students each partnered with a community member and chose an activity to code during the event. With dancing and popular Disney-themed games, students were able to work their way through increasingly challenging levels of code.

“Once you get the hang of it, it’s kind of easy,” Perez said. He was assisted by fifth-grader Keira Cooke. The two created an avatar that performed a sequence of fun dance moves.

“Right now in Texas, we know there are 30,000 vacant computer science jobs, so whatever we can do to get kids interested and kind of prepare them for that path is our goal,” Stephens said.

All 7,000 Angleton ISD students are being asked to complete the hour of code as a part of the education week, Stephens said.

Those students who go online and complete a 10-part coding process through a district initiative called Code Front will be eligible to participate in a pizza party in January, Stephens said.

“For my mindset, it just shows them they can do more and achieve more,” Robotics Club director Katie Medina said. “This, for them, looks like a game, but in real life they can go farther and achieve careers in STEM.”

Starting early and incorporating small amounts of coding early on is beneficial to the leaning process, Medina said.

“It lets me be creative, and it’s mainly just fun,” fifth-grade student Andrew Aasletten said.

Aasletten and the county judge worked on code for a dancing game that was a few minutes long.

“This is something anyone in the world can do,” Stephens said. “We want to instill in our kids that learning is messy. It’s fun and it’s hard and you’re gonna make mistakes, and so, you know, this is something a lot of adults haven’t tried. And it’s not so much just about computer science but computational thinking.”