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.

Dates for the Summer Term are: Thurs 24^th Apr'14 – Thurs 17^th 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.

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 15^th 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 10^th 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!

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.

On Saturday 8^th 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 26^th 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

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), 2^nd Huseyin Gueriane (5.5 / 6),

U11: 1st Aryan Naryan (5.5 / 6), 2^nd 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), 2^nd 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.