On Sunday 18th May 2014, I played in the Kent Mega Final 3 at Tonbridge Girls Grammar School. The U9 competition was very close and after 6 exciting games, I was fortunate to win the U9 Supremo trophy with 5½ points following a play off.  

I would like to thank everyone who has coached me, Aces Sevenoaks coaches Krishna Shiatis and Rohan Shiatis, Michael Shahoud and all the coaches at the KJCA Aces training days including GMs John Emms and Chris Ward .

I would also like to thank everyone at the Claremont School Chess Club and my parents for their support and encouragement.

Charlie Metcalfe

Our seventh GP was held on Sunday 1st June at the beautiful location of Sutton Valance Senior School.

It was great to see so many children entering, many playing in their first ever KJCA event and representing many different schools and counties.

With 71 participants competing across four sections, the top two in each section were:

U9: 1st Huseyin Gueriane (6/6), 2^nd Saahil Bansal (5/6),

U11: 1st Charlie Metcalfe (5.5 / 6), 2^nd equal Navieinaah Haridas, Arjun Gobiraj and Giovanni Currah (4.5 / 6)

U14 (merged with the U18s): 1st equal: James Elgar and Aadarsh Saravanan (2.5 / 5)

U18: 1st Jackson Wen (4.5 / 5), 2^nd Anantha Anilkumar (4 / 5)

Primary School: Claremont Primary (67.5)

Secondary School: Sevenoaks (89.1)

Full cross tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/result/70

Current leaders of the GP tables after this event are as follows:

U9: Ranesh Ratnesan

U11: Kiran Shiatis

U14: Anantha Anilkumar

U18: Raunak Rao

Primary School: Claremont Primary

Secondary School: St Olave's Grammar

Full GP tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=GPTables.

Thanks to the many parents and children who kindly helped out on the day, without you we would not be able to function and as always all help is much appreciated.

Many thanks to Sutton Valance for accommodating us and also a huge thank you to all the many parents and children who helped on the day.

Please note: Our GP final, will be held on Saturday July 5th July 2014 at Newstead Woods school in Orpington. There will be prizes for the top three in each section on the day and medals for all the U9s. This event will also decide our overall Grand Prix winners for the 2013/14 season and best primary and secondary school. There will be lots of trophies for overall results of the season (not just the winners).

As usual you can enter online and we hope to see many (if not all) of you there once again.

Article written by Suriya Velayudham: 

I am really happy that I won the U7 supremo title in Kent, mega final 2014 . 

I got 5/6 and came first in U7. I would like to thank my coaches GM Chris Ward, Aces Sevenoaks coach Krishna Shiatis and my Beechwood school chess club coach Mr. Anthony for their teaching and guidance. 

Also, I would like to say my special thanks to my parents and my brother Kartik for their encouragement and support to make me play chess. Hopefully, I will do well in giga final and make everyone proud of me. 

Thank you again to you all.

Suriya xx

Congratulations to our young Kent U11 team for taking an extremely hard fought second place at the National finals against some very strong opposition.

The EPSCA U11 National Final was hosted by Northampton at the Malcom Arnold Academy on Saturday 10^th May 2014 with 17 county teams (qualifying out of the original 24) all competing for the National Title over three gruelling rounds.

Despite the drizzly weather, the team spirit of Kent’s young guns was anything but damp, with the players gathering early on the day full of excitement and anticipation, eager for the team talks and to get stuck into the first round. It was a team with a good combination of experience, enthusiasm and youth; many playing in their first national finals and all conducting themselves with good grace and maturity. It was a day to be proud to be a part of Kent Junior Chess.

Right from the go, it was clear that our players were not there to just make up the numbers but to compete at the very highest level; with a superb score of 17.5 out of 20 in the first round, a score which could only be matched by a very strong Sussex team. Barnet were third on 15.5, then Herts on 14, Notts on 13 and Wey-Valley 12.

Sussex showed their strength in round 2 with a solid 16.5, stretching their lead, whilst Kent faltered slightly scoring just 11.5. We were second at this stage but only just, with both Wey-Valley and Barnet breathing down our necks, a point behind.

The team rallied in round 3 to show its true fighting spirit, bouncing back with a score of 15, leading the way to a nail biting finish for second place. Sussex finished with style, scoring 18 to take the U11 title. Barnet finished with a third round score of 13.5 points. Wey-Valley took the fight all the way to the wire but could only manage a score of 15.5, leaving them just a half point adrift.

The final scores were as follows:

Sussex 52, Kent 44, Wey-Valley 43.5, Barnet 41.5, Berkshire 38, Nottinghamshire 35, Hertfordshire 34, Cheshire and N. Wales 30.5, Oxfordshire 30, Cambrigdeshire 27.5, Yorkshire 23, Richmond 23, Essex 19.5, Wiltshire 19, Lancashire 18.5, Northants. 16.5 and Manchester 14.5.

Congratulations to each and every one of our team members as they all played their part in securing this hugely credible result for the county. The strength of our opponents varied across the boards but everyone battled equally bravely.

The team was as follows:

Freddie ‘the Slayer’ Hand (Team Captain), Ximan ‘the Mighty’ Mao, Kiran ‘the Kool’ Shiatis, Haolin ‘the Master’ Zhao, Mikey ‘the Warrior’ Watson, ‘Rampant’ Ranesh Ratnesan, Alejandro ‘the Assassin’ Ito-Aramendia, Aryan ‘the Annihilator’ Narayan, Aurideep ‘the Attacker’ Nayak, Gaurav ‘the Gangsta’ Kocher, Ben ‘the Battler’ Gardner, ‘Ferocious’ Freddie Nunn, ‘Resolute’ Rajeiv Ratnesan, Bobby ‘The Bobster’ Akeya-Price, Ben ‘the Barbarian’ Barton, Navieinaah ‘Killer Queen’ Haridas, Mahuaa ‘the Marvel’ Verma, Arjun ‘the Grinder’ Gobiraj, Charlie ‘the Cheeky Champ’ Metcalfe, Alex ‘the Awesome’ Garfield, Kimball ‘the Nimble’ Catling, Edward ‘the Enforcer’ Cross, Ryan ‘the Menacing’ Malik and Oliver ‘the Destroyer’ Dobson.

Thank you to Sam “the Crusher” Cartwright, Rikin ‘the Ready-Man’ Parikh and Timofey ‘the Torpedo’ Selyukov for helping us qualify through the Zonal.

A huge thank you to all the players, parents, supporting siblings (!), GM Chris Ward (for his inspiration and for starting the nick name precedent), our president Anil Anilkumar, our glamorous team managers Andrew and Krishna Shiatis, all the great coaches working hard behind the scenes in Kent, the team at Northampton led by Nigel Mapletoft, EPSCA and all the great volunteers at the KJCA who help to keep the Kent Juniors consistently strong every year!

Full results can be found on:

http://oxfordfusion.com/epsca/TeamsOverall.cfm?EventID=55

Best wishes

Andrew and Krishna

U11 Team Managers

Congratulations to Mikey on being the ECF nominee in the U10s for England at 
the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow!!!!

We are all very pleased and proud of Mikey. It is well deserved and we wish 
him all the best!

GP7 at Sutton Valance has been moved back one week to the 1st of June since the school could no longer accommodate us on the 25th.

On Saturday 26^th April our Kent U9 squad all had an early start to travel to Nottingham for the Inter Counties Final. Most by car or train that morning, but 1 or 2 the previous night, we all arrived safely and in time to do battle with the 17 other best county teams in the country. Those included our usual rivals Barnet, Wey Valley, Sussex and Nottinghamshire but perhaps it was Hertfordshire that proved to be the surprise package of the day.

Each round scores being from the 12 members of the main team, we achieved 8.5 in round 1, 10 in round 2 and 9 in round 3 totalling a very creditable 27.5/36. You may recall that Kent won the event last year and though that was an amazing achievement, in fact we only scored 25pts on that day. This time 2.5 pts more was only enough to secure 3^rd place, a mere half a point behind 2^nd place behind Hertfordshire.

The Kent reserves did manage 2^nd place in their separate competition to claim an additional medal and at this point I would like remind everyone of the contributions to the extended squad of Efe Shimwell, Ishaan Yewale, Mason Graves-Brown, Dennis Ivin, Radha Ratnesan, Jai  Singh Chaturvedi and Yong Gui Wang. They all contributed to our zonal win at Eltham and we definitely had more talent to pick from than from any year before. Provided all concerned continue to put in the work, I can only see us going from strength to strength. All 24 could conceivably fit into a 24 player U11 team in 2 years’ time (isn’t that an appetising thought!) and many will still be available for the U9 team next year too!

So, enjoying a wonderful day was Haolin ‘The Master’ Zhao, ‘Rampant’ Ranesh Ratnesan, The Bobster (Robert Akeya-Price), ‘Killer Queen’ Naviein(aah) Haridas, Charlie (Metcalfe) ‘The Cheeky Champ’, Thomas ‘The Hit Man’ Gardner, ‘Hurricane’ Huseyin Gueriane, ‘Magnificent’ Moad Shamekh, ‘Nimble’ Kimball Catling, ‘Awesome’ Anika Roy, Alex ‘Lethal’ Levin, ‘Axeman’ Abishaik Gnanethiran, Oliver ‘The Destroyer’ Dobson, ‘Dangerous’ David Dallakyan, Shaun ‘The Power’ Passari, Charlotte ‘Brutal’ Bruce and ‘Super’ Saahil Bansal.

I could offer a special mention to the main team 3/3 maximum’s of Haolin, Ranesh (Birthday Boy!), Charlie and Abishaik or indeed to the terrific reserve score of 2.5/3 from David, but in truth nobody had a bad total and in most other years we would have come away with golds all round.           

Congratulations to Barnet for an unbelievably good score and thanks to all those who attended on the day including anxious nail-biting parents and of course the managers Ratnesan and Bansal senior(!) for all their hard work.    

1^st Barnet 31.5

2^nd Herts 28

3^rd Kent 27.5

We’ll be back, but for now over to the U11s…

GM Chris Ward

Our sixth GP was held on Sunday 13th April at The Schools of Somerhill.

Once again there was beautiful sunshine to welcome everyone on arrival at this lovely Kent venue. It was great to see so many children coming along from so many different schools and counties, making this yet another hugely successful KJCA event.

Thanks to the many parents and children who kindly helped out on the day, without you we would not be able to function and always all help is always much appreciated.

U9: 1st Charlotte Bruce (5.5 / 6), 2^nd Efe Shimwell (5 / 6),

U11: 1st Aardash Saravanan (5.5 / 6), 2^nd Mahuaa Verma (5 / 6)

U14 (merged with the U18s): 1st equal: Aryan Narayan, Rajeiv Ratnesan, Pramoth Ragavan, Edward Burton (2.5 / 5)

U18: 1st Girinath Haridas (4.5 / 5), 2^nd equal Raunak Rao and Michael Green (4 / 5)

Primary School: Claremont Primary (69.8)

Secondary School: St Olave's Grammar (57.6)

Full cross tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/result/69

Current leaders of the GP tables after this event are as follows:

U9: Ranesh Ratnesan

U11: Kiran Shiatis

U14: Anantha Anilkumar

U18: Raunak Rao

Primary School: Claremont Primary

Secondary School: St Olave's Grammar

Full GP tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=GPTables.

Many thanks to The Schools at Somerhill for accommodating us and also a huge thank you to all the many parents and children who helped on the day.

Please note: Our seventh GP, will be held on Sunday May 25th 2014 at Sutton Valance Senior School. As usual you can enter online and we hope to see many (if not all) of you there once again.