Two Juniors from Kent Crowned British Junior Chess Champions 2012!

Congratulations to all our children who traveled all the way to North Shields to participate in the British Chess Championships this year. Everyone played super chess and it was great to see that so many made the journey. Next year the British will be held in Torquay and we hope to see lots of our juniors playing and hopefully some more titles to add to our increasing tally.

Kent Juniors Selected to Represent England in the European Youth Chess Championships in Prague!

Congratulations to some of our top juniors who have been selected to represent England at the Europeans. They are Patrick Smith (U16s), Rohan Shiatis (U14s), Conor Murphy (U14s), Arul Gupta (U12s), Girinath Haridas (U12s). The tournament runs from the 16^th August until 26^th August and you can follow their progress on the following link:

http://www.eycc2012.eu/

We wish them all the best and hopefully we can publish some of their best games here!

An exciting day at the Kent Grand Prix Final!

On Sunday July 1^st, 76 brave juniors came along to do battle at the GP final in Sevenoaks. It was a very exciting day as there were overall GP prizes at stake as well as section results.

Once the dust had settled after the day of chess and GP scores were tallied, we were able to unveil our Overall Kent GP 2011-2012 Champions. They were as follow:

U9 Kent GP Champion 2011-2012 : Kiran Shiatis (123.4 points)

Detailed results on http://www.kjca.org/GPTable/view/1

U11 Kent GP Champion 2011 – 2012: Jackson Wen (130.6 points)

Detailed results on http://www.kjca.org/GPTable/view/2

U14 Kent GP Champion 2011 – 2012: Patrick Smith (152.9 points)

Detailed results on http://www.kjca.org/GPTable/view/3

U18 Kent GP Champion 2011 – 2012: Duncan Bell (176.1 points)

Detailed results on http://www.kjca.org/GPTable/view/4

All the sections were hard fought and final results for the day's tournaments being as follows:

U9: 1^st Tobias Albrecht, 2^nd Mikey Watson, 3^rd equal Sachin Wadhwani and Ryan Malik

U11: 1^st Harry Houllion and Alex Sheerin, 3^rd equal Ronit Nair and Nii-Akwei Carty Bing-Pappoe

U14: 1^st Owen Messere, 2^nd equal Jackson Wen, Jessica Wen and Lucy Ayliffe

U18: 1^st Duncan Bell, 2^nd equal Rohan Bansal and Patrick Smith.

Congratulations to all the children who played such super chess. A big thank you to all our wonderful volunteers in particular Martha Gilbert for catering, Sue Maguire for all her work throughout the year, Michael Gilbert for running it all, our arbiters for the day Andrew Shiatis, Luca Bernardini, Anil Anilkumar and Rajadurai Haridas and to Sevenoaks School for the wonderful facilities on the day.

EPSCA Under 9 Final

Many thanks to all the Kent children and parents who came along to the EPSCA U9 final held at the Malcolm Arnold Academy in Northampton. There was a fantastic team spirit and some superb chess was played by all.

Kent finished a credible 6^th in the end, having regrouped and bounced back from a groggy start leaving us in 11^thplace after round 1. The children showed good fighting spirit, scoring a resounding 9 out of 12 in round 2; a promising sign for future events to come as they continue to play chess and progress up through the age groups. There were some excellent performances by all the players and a full report will follow.

A huge thank you to the team managers, Rachel Gardner and Krishna Shiatis, and to GM Chris Ward our coach, all of whom put in a lot of hard work for this event and did an excellent job in bringing the team together and encouraging them on the day. 

A big thank you also to Northamptonshire, who as always provided a fantastic venue and put on a well organised and slick event.

In the end it was Barnet's day and many congratulations to them for winning the final, having led all the way from start to finish. Sussex were second with Wey Valley just a further 2 pts behind in third.

Final placings and scores were:

1 Barnet 30 points

2 Sussex 28.5 pts

3 Wey Valley 26.5 pts

4 Nottinghamshire 24 pts

5 Wiltshire 21.5 pts

6 Kent 19 pts

7= Buckinghamshire 18.5 pts

7= Berkshire 18.5 pts

9= Manchester 16.5 pts

9= Yorkshire 16.5 pts

11 Hertfordshire 16 pts

12 Northamptonshire 15.5 pts

13= Oxfordshire 15 pts

13= Richmond 15 pts

15 Oldham 12.5 pts

16 Essex 11.5 pts

17 Cheshire & North Wales 11 pts

18 Lancashire 8 pts

Kent U14 win the SCCU Open event (report by Rohan Shiatis)

Team members: Rohan Shiatis, Girinath Haridas, Alexander Selway, Jackson Wen, Michael Gilbert, James Meredith, Anantha Anilkumar and Francesco Bernardini.