News
Kent Junior Newsround Update no. 15
A big well done to Kent's Viktor Jamroz, of Crofton Junior School, who scored a fantastic 7 out of 9 in a neighboring county's tournament on 22nd March 2014.
Academy for Chess Excellence and Skills
5th Grand Master Chess training camp with GM Chris Ward and GM John EmmsWednesday 9th and Thursday 10th April
10am to 4pm (arrival at 9:30am)
The grand Master training camp is back! We had wonderful feedback from our February event, so we have decided to host another one during the Easter school holidays.
GM Chris Ward and GM John Emms will be leading a group of four coaches, who will work with small groups of children to improve their chess awareness and skill in a fun environment.
We aim for small groups of about 10 so that we can dedicate enough attention to everyone, from experienced county players to beginners.
All children will have at least one session with each grandmaster.
The cost will be £35 per child per day (£30 per child if booking 2 or more siblings).
If booking for both days, the cost is reduced to £30 per child per day (£25 per day if booking two or more siblings).
There are only 40 spaces available; to reserve a place for your child please e-mail Luca Bernardini;
luca@plantz.uk.com, with name, age, chess experience and ECF grade of your child if available, and which day you would like to book.
Venue:
St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, Westgate Road, Beckenham, Kent, BR3 5DE
ACES Sevenoaks Chess Coaching
Is pleased to announce that John Emms GM will be joining the coaching team from September 2014! Priority for September will be given to existing members.
Location: Knole Academy, Bradbourne Vale Road,
Sevenoaks, Kent, TN13 3LE
Every Thursday from 5.00pm to 6:30pm
Dates for the Summer Term are: Thurs 24th Apr'14 – Thurs 17th Jul'14
The emphasis as always is on fun, learning, playing chess,
building confidence and making friends. Children of all standards are welcome; whether
you are already proficient or have no previous knowledge or experience of the
game – all you need is an interest in learning and playing chess.
The aim is to provide a location for chess students in the Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells area to train and play together to a county level.
We will be working closely with the Kent Junior Chess
Association and will encourage participation of the talented students in County
Level events as well as National events.
Total due £58.50 (£6.50 per week)
Please
contact me (Krishna Shiatis) at amazikidz@hotmail.co.uk should you have any queries.
ACES (Sevenoaks) is the sister organisation to ACES (Bromley) which is held at Bishop Challoner School in Shortlands and held on a Thursday evening during term time. The contact for ACES (Bromley) is luca@plantz.uk.com.
Kent take second in the U11 EPSCA Eastern Zonal
Congratulatins to our young Kent U11 team for taking silver medals.
The EPSCA U11
Eastern Zone was hosted by Essex at Chingford
Foundation School on Saturday 15th March. The sun was out to greet
the nine counties competing for the U11 Eastern Zone title and also a place in
the EPSCA U11 final which will be held in Northamptonshire on Saturday 10th
May.
Our young Kent team gathered full of
excitement and anticipation, many playing in their first ever team event for
their county. Right from the go, it was clear that our players were determined
not just to qualify but to try and do so in style, with a good solid score of
14.5 in the first round, equal with Richmond and just half a point down on
Barnet.
Barnet stretched their legs in the
second round, taking a fantastic 19 out of twenty points, with Kent faltering
slightly scoring 13.5 and now trailing by six points; but now clear in second place. Undaunted, the players picked themselves up for
the last round, determined that Barnet would not have it all their own way. We
scored a resounding 16 points, winning the round, but not quite enough to close
the gap completely.
The final scores were as follows:
Barnet 48.5, Kent 44, Richmond 37, Hertfordshire 33, Essex 30, Cambridgeshire
27, Suffolk 24, Northamtonshire 19.5 and Newham 7.
Congratulations to each and every one of our team as they all played their part in securing second place. The strength of our opponents varied and hence it was luck of the draw with some of the children facing some very tough games.
The team was as follows: Freddie Hand, Ximan Mao, Kiran
Shiatis, Haolin Zhao, Mikey Watson, Ranesh Ratnesan, Alejandro Ito-Aramendia,
Aurideep Nayak, Ben Gardner, Gaurav Kocher, Timofey Selyukov, Freddie Nunn, Rajeiv
Ratnesan, Aryan Narayan, Ben Barton, Navieinaah Haridas, Arjun Gobiraj, Edward
Cross, Charlie Metcalfe, Ryan Malik, Kimball Catling, Sam Cartwright, Alex
Garfield and Rikin Parikh.
A big thank you to all the players,
parents, Rob Maguire, GM Chris Ward, Anil Anilkumar, our team managers Andrew
and Krishna Shiatis, all the great coaches working behind the scenes in Kent, the
team at Essex led by Dave Hawkins, EPSCA and all the great volunteers at the
KJCA who help to keep the Kent Juniors consistently strong every year!
Kent Success at the SCCU Championships Mar 14
Sunday 9th March 2014 - Kent U18 Major team take 1st place at SCCU tournament defeating stiff opposition from Sussex, Berkshire and Surrey. The Kent U18 minor team (mostly U11s) narrowly missed out on the top spot on tie-break to scoop second place and the Kent U14 Minor team fought bravely to take 3rd place in their competition. Congratulations to all our teams and players for playing consistently well and battling so bravely in each and every game!
The Teams (alphabetical order):
U18 Open, Anantha Anilkumar, Arul Gupta, Freddie Hand, Gautham Reddiar, Michael Green, Raunak Rao, Rohan Bansal, Yasmin Giles
U18 Minor: Alejandro Ito-Aramendia, Emily Green, James Maguire, Kartik Velayudham, Kiran Shiatis, Ximan Mao
U14 Minor: Aurideep Nayak, Gaurav Kocher, James Elgar, Jacob Watson, Mikey Watson, Nii-Akwei Carty Bing-Pappoe
Pictures and more detail to follow.
U9s win EPSCA Zonal - Report by GM Chris Ward
On Saturday 8th March Kent, hosted the EPSCA U9
East Zonal and it was the first opportunity to see how our talented young
players would fair against the best of some of the other counties. Well, they
certainly didn’t let us down as Kent led from the front and ultimately
accelerated away to victory, giving us qualification to the finals and gold
medals all round.
The Kent committee and supporting parents were complimented
on the day’s excellent organisation and as the event was being held at Eltham
School, we were able to give 24 juniors a taste of competition chess at county
level. Each and every one of them did our county proud and the main team of 12 ultimately
finished with a score of 25/36. This was comprised of a reasonable round 1
score of 8, followed by a slight dip with 7 in round 2 before showing our true
colours with an excellent 10 in the final round.
Although the coach (that would be me!) was content with the
final placing, it was also noted that a few unnecessary points were conceded
through not looking out for checks (that both you and your opponent can do) and
on occasion, moving too quickly. Although we must continue writing our moves
down (except when short on time) so that it becomes second nature (helping us
to remain calm and avoid becoming over-excited), I was extremely pleased to see
techniques learnt at our coaching days, being employed to great success.
The KJCA has worked very hard to try to improve both the
numbers and the standard of young players in Kent and this is was a clear
indication that we are going in the right direction. The only sad element is
that we will have to whittle the squad down to 16 for the EPSCA U9 final on
April 26th and that is a decision that will be made straight after
GP6 at Sommerhill. As always we are looking for a good attendance for that
tournament and if you are available, myself and the team managers would
particularly like to see in attendance all who are in contention for team
places.
Congratulations then to the Kent U9 squad for Saturday’s
excellent result:
Haolin Zhao, Ranesh Ratnesan, Robert Akeye-Price, Navieinaah
Haridas, Thomas Gardner, Charlie Metcalfe, Alexander Levin, Huseyin Gueriane,
Saahil Bansal, Abishaik Gnanenthiran, David Dallakyan, Dennis Ivin, Moad
Shamekh, Charlotte Bruce, Anika Roy, Shaun Pasari, Kimball Catling, Oliver
Dobson, Efe Shimwell, Mason Graves-Brown, Yong Gui Wang, Jai Singh Chaturvedi, Ishaan
Yewale, Radha Ratnesan
My conclusion: Pretty good and with definite room for improvement too. We can move on to the final with confidence and further tussles with Barnet as well as the likes of Wey Valley, Sussex and Nottinghamshire in their own back yard. Exciting times!
GM Chris Ward
Well done, we are so proud of you all, from the KJCA.
Full results can be found on the following link:
http://oxfordfusion.com/epsca/TeamsOverall.cfm?EventID=44
GP 5 Dulwich College 2013/14
Our fifth GP was held on Sunday 2nd March at Dulwich College.
Beautiful sunshine welcomed everyone on arrival at this magnificent venue, steeped in history. It was great to see so many children coming along from so many different schools and counties, making this another hugely successful KJCA event.
Thank you to all the parents and children who kindly helped out on the day, any and as always all help is always much appreciated. It was great to see all the familiar faces as well as the new faces especially the friendly contingent from Holy Trinity School!
U9: 1st
Charlie Metcalfe (6 / 6), 2nd Huseyin Gueriane (5.5 / 6),
U11: 1st
Aryan Naryan (5.5 / 6), 2nd equal Ben Barton, Bridie O’Leary (5 / 6)
U14:
1st Francesco Bernardini (5.5 / 6), 2nd equal Ranesh Ratnesan, Alejandro
Ito-Aramendia, Eoin O’Leary (4/5)
U18: 1st
Freddie Hand (5 / 5), 2nd Anantha Anilkumar (3.5 / 5)
Primary School: King’s College School (57.8)
Secondary
School: St Olave's Grammar (68.0)
Full
cross tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/result/68
Current
leaders of the GP tables after this event are as follows:
U9: Ranesh
Ratnesan
U11: Ximan
Mao
U14: Anantha
Anilkumar
U18: Raunak
Rao
Primary
School: Dulwich Prep London
Secondary
School: St Olave's Grammar
Full
GP tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=GPTables.
Many
thanks to Dulwich College for accommodating us and also a huge thank you
to all the many parents and children who helped on the day.
Please note: Our sixth GP, will be held on the Sunday April 13th 2014 at The Schools at Somerhill. As usual you can enter online and we hope to see many (if not all) of you there.
West of England Junior Chess Championships
Well done to all those Kent Juniors who travelled down to
Swindon to participate in the West of England Junior Chess Championships on the
22nd and 23rd February.
Kent was represented across all the age groups, from the
beginners and U8 championship through to the U16 Major section.
The best result of the weekend was achieved by Jacob Watson, who scored an excellent 5½
out of 6 in the U12 Challengers, winning the section outright.
Michael Green also
did very well in the U16 Major section and got the Grading prize. Girinath Haridas, Jessica Wen and Jackson Wen also competed in the older
sections.
Playing some quality games in the U12 Championship section
were Anantha Anilkumar, Francesco
Bernadini, Mikey Watson, Emily Green, Ximan Mao and Guarav Kocher.
Kent was represented in the U10 section by Freddie Nunn and Rajeiv Ratesan, and in the U9 by Ranesh
Ratesan and Navienaah Haridas. They all played very well. There was a special
mention for Navienaah at prize giving for her tactical gameplay and she received
the controller prize.
In the U8s, Robert
Akeya-Price, had a superb result with 4 ½ out of 6, and secured joint 2nd
place. Radha Ratnesan also did very well and was rewarded by jointly
winning the best girl prize.
See http://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/WiltshireWoEPrizes14.pdf
for a link to the prizegiving. (note: a number of our Kent players are being
shown as Surrey!)
Institute of Chess results
The results achieved at the KJCA's Institutue of Chess examination session held at Barming Primary School on Saturday 9th February 2014, are as listed below. The certificates will be presented during the afternoon of the KJCA GP5 tournament at Dulwich College on Sunday 2nd March 2014.
Level 5: Coach
– GM John Emms: 4 candidates
Merit:
Charlotte Wistow
Pass:
Nii-Akwei Carty Bing-Pappoe
Riya Parikh
Emily Wistow
Level 4: Coach
– GM Chris Ward: 15 candidates
Distinction:
Nikhil Chidipothu
Ximan Mao
Aurideep Nayak
Rajeiv Ratnesan
Ranesh Ratnesan
Jacob Watson
Mikey Watson
Merit:
Rikin Parikh
Aria Sharma
Rishi Sharma
Pass:
Sebastian Davies
Navieinaah Haridas
Dennis Ivin
Jacob Scarse
Isabelle Wistow
Level 3: Coaches
– WFM Ros Kieran and Matt Lunn:
20 candidates
Distinction:
Oliver
Dobson
Matthew Dubery
Oleg Gaidai
Huseyin Gueriane
Charlie Metcalfe
Anika Roy
Efe Shimwell
Jai Singh-Chaturvedi
Merit:
Charlotte Bruce
Frederick Donaldson
Alexander Levin
Costas Nomikos
Madhav Suraj
Pass:
Kimball Catling
Abishaik Gnanenthiran
Mason Graves-Brown
Shazia Khan-Bourne
Haris Nomikos
Suriya Velayudham
Rhea Rentala
Dhruv Madan (exam taken since Barming)
Level 2: Coach
– Robert Maguire: 14 candidates
100%:
Theodore Panchev
Shaylan Roy
Distinction:
Aditya Chaurasia
Xirui Mao
Tom Mortimer
Seth Pierce
Raakavi Rajaseelan
Joshua Taylor (exam taken since Barming)
Merit:
Ira Dubey
Gregory Ivin
Radha Ratnesan
Pass:
Sam Gardiner
Luca
Ricci
Michael
Stringer
Meenaxi
Suraj
Level 1: Coach
– James Maguire: 7 candidates
Distinction:
Maxim Catling
Nell Grabham
Sofia Winchester
Merit:
Arthur Hillard
Claire Holtgen
Anya Srivastava
Pass:
Joe Grabham
GP 4 Gravesend 2013/14
Our fourth GP was held on Saturday 15th February at Gravesend Grammar School and marks the half way point of the 2013/14 season. Please take a look at the GP tables to see how you are all doing.
Many braved the fierce storms to turn out in impressive numbers, making this another hugely successful KJCA event. Thank you to all the parents and children who kindly helped out on the day, any and all help is always much appreciated.
With 64 participants competing across four sections, the top two in each section were:
U8: 1st Anika Roy (6 / 6), 2nd Mason Graves-Brown (5 / 6),
U9: 1st equal Shaun Pasari and Thomas Gardner (4.5 / 6),
U11: 1st Bridie O'Leary (5.5 / 6), 2nd Rikin Parikh (4 / 6)
The U10s were mergerd into this section: 1st Ben Barton (4.5 / 6), 2nd equal Matthew Dubery and Alex Garfield (4 / 6)
U18: 1st Raunak Rao (5 / 5), 2nd Ximan Mao (4 / 5)
The U14s were merged into this section: 1st Ranesh Ratnesan (3.5 / 5), 2nd Jacob Watson, Zeeshan Kisat and Aurideep Nayak (3 / 5)
Primary School: Home Educated (58.2)
Secondary School: St Olave's Grammar (90.0)
Full cross tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/result/67
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: Dulwich Prep London
Secondary School: St Olave's Grammar
Full GP tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=GPTables.
Many thanks to Gravesend Grammar for accommodating us and also a huge thank you to all the many parents and children who helped on the day.
Please note: Our fifth GP, will be held on the 2nd March 2014 at Dulwich College. As usual you can enter online and we hope to see many (if not all) of you there.
KJCA
