Kent Mignocchi and Joel Wooldridge delivered two extremely strong sessions scoring 66.54% followed by 66.91% in the D24 NAP Open Flight field of 14.5 tables. That was enough to take 1st place by a margin of over 4 boards above and beyond the next closest pair. Because of an interesting clause in the North American Open Pairs rules, Kent and Joel did not compete in the District finals last year. They didn’t need to after winning the entire March 2022 NAP national finals in Reno, allowing for automatic qualification to New Orleans 2023 (similar to the All Valley Tournament rules in Karate Kid 3?).
NAP-A Qualifiers:
Joel Wooldridge / Kent Mignocchi
Migry Zur Campanile / Andrew Rosenthal
David Gurvich / Michael Lipkin
(1st alternate): Robert Kuhnreich / Elliot Sternlicht
NAP-C Qualifiers:
Kenneth Mandel / Andrew Jeanguenat
Maya Jonas-Silver / Jack Latta
Yuchen Xu / Music Li
Lee Silberman / Joshua Allen
(1st alternate): Yanlai Yang / Yihan Xiao
(2nd alternate): Jessica U / Jingyang Ng
In Flight C, grassroots veterans Kenneth Mandel and Andrew Jeanguenat took first place, just ahead of their longtime teammates and fellow District GNT-C champions Maya Jonas-Silver and Jack Latta. All four are prior NAP-C national finals veterans and plan to compete this Sunday in NAP-B (which may lead to an interesting travel stipend trade-off).
NAP-B Finals This Sunday
All eligible 0-2500 players are welcome to compete this Sunday, even if you have already qualified for Flight C.
110 East 55th Street 6th floor, 11am start time.
1st Place: 22.5 gold points + $1400/pair
2nd Place: 16.88 gold points + $600/pair
3rd Place: 12.66 gold points + invitation to national finals
4th Place: invitation to national finals (points depends on number of entries)