Over the weekend of October 25th to 26th, UofT students and alumni competed in the annual club championship to crown the strongest player at the Hart House Chess Club in 2025.

The field averaged at a rating of 1771, with over three of the top players rated at 2300+ CFC. There were also a handful of players who were unrated, hoping to achieve either a CFC and/or a FIDE rating after this tournament.

As the top seed in the tournament, FM Sergey Noritysn swept the field, achieving a perfect score of 5/5 and attaining this year’s title of the Hart House Chess Club Champion!

In clear 2nd place was Ethan Moon, with 4/5 points, losing only to Sergey. Tied for 3rd place were WFM Cindy Qiao and Bingfei Wang at 3.5/5 points after making a draw in the last round.

Full event results can be found here.

A big thank you to the arbiter team—Deepanshi Matai, Victor Zheng, and Alex Ferreira. Also, thank you to the photographer, Franklin Wu, for these event photographs. Finally, thank you to all the players, we hope to see you again for next year’s club championship!

More pictures taken at the event are up on the Hart House Chess Club’s FB page: https://www.facebook.com/TheHartHouseChessClub

Event report by Cindy Qiao.