No team had a perfect 3.0 score and three teams tied for first with 2.5 points in the 2-on-2 Team Championship Saturday, June 18 at the Chess Club & Scholastic Center of Saint Louis.

Under the set-up both players would have to win for a complete point for the team. However several individual players did have perfect scores but the team score determined the final standings.

The three teams taking the top spot and $83.33 (to be split by the team members) were the Kansas City Chess Club (Kenneth Fee Jr., 1865, and Franklin Whitsell, 1777), Space Monkey Mafia (Danny Machuca, 1858, and Iris Zhou, 1718), and Baby Bears (Tom Polgar Shutzman, 2134, and Rakshana Sundara, 1314).

Kansas City Chess Club and Space Monkey Mafia faced off in the final round. Zhou beat Whitsell but Fee beat Machuca as the teams tied.

“Iris sacked her queen and got one rook and two knights,” Whitsell said. “And her two knights had outposts in the middle of the board.”

Asked why the two made the journey to the River City to play, Fee said, “It’s a happening place.”

“We like the team concept,” Fee said. “Franklin and I travel a lot to tournaments and we don’t like to play each other.”

Mike Kummer (1799) performed double duty directing the tournament and playing with Teo Quijada (1758) on the team Mega Men.

Kummer called it a “fun tournament.”

“It’s good to see the camaraderie between the team mates,” he said.

Among the clever team names was Al About That Bass, featuring Al Howlett and Keith Bass. Honwlett said Bass didn’t get it until he played the song “All About That Bass” for him. They also split $60 for their winning effort. The Naples Knights were a team from Florida, presumably Naples (Tony Burrus, 1878, and Dylan Flegel, 841). Michael Pugachev, 1082, and Leonardo Ludaescher, 828, comprised the team, Turtle Power! (Two of the Teenage Mutant Teenage Turtles are named Michelangelo and Leonardo.)

Three teams each won $13.33. Those teams were the Terrible Toddlers (Grant Johnson, 1293, and Aidan Johnson, 1292), Cloud Nine (Steven Evans, 1684, and Jason Woolem, 540), and Booooooo (Santosh Ramakrishnan, 683, and Prakash Ramakrishnan, 614).

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Full tournament crosstable: http://www.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?201606184582