The first GP of the 2017-18 season was held at Tonbridge Girls’ Grammar School on Saturday 16^th September 2017. 

As a London Junior Chess Championships (LJCC) qualifier we had lots of strong competitors across the younger sections of U8, U10 and U12. Also a combined U18 Minor and Major section gave our older players some good quality chess games.

The prizewinners in each section were:

U8: 1^st  Alexey Lapidus (5.5/6), 2^nd  Rohan Pasari (5/6), 3^rd equal Yashasvini Steeram and Adi Srivastava (4.5/6).

Also qualifying for the LJCC U8: Joshua Moisey and Sofia El-Bachir

U10: 1^st James Lindquist (5.5/6), 2^nd equal Yifan Luo and Lev Mann (5/6).

Also qualifying for the LJCC U10 Major: Artemiy Shkuratovskyi, Kavin Thooran, Amit Aryan Sanka.   Qualfying for the LJCC U10 Minor: Dylan Paterson, Theo Kritzinger, Siena Gurjar, Lavinai Fear, Teo Saunders, Nour Ajili, Max Bell, Roxolana Chaban, Ismail Longia-Zaidi, Reuben Moisey, Sebastian Cazac.

U12: 1^st (5.5/6) Denis Dupius, 2^nd (5/6) Shahjahon Saidmurodov, 3^rd equal Logan Fear and Stakhey Sedykh (4.4/6).  All also qualifying for the LJCC U12 Major.

Also qualifying for the LJCC U12 Minor were:  Yacine El-Bachir, Kirill Povarenkin, Roshan Gurjar, Ciaran Brightley-Davies, Dominic Coates and Samantha Mercer.

The U18 Minor and U18 Major were merged on the day. However, separate prizes were awarded:

U18 Minor: 1^st Thomas Crawley-Boevey (3/5), 2^nd equal Charlotte Bruce, Atticus Fear, James Holmes and Lorcan Pritchard (2.5/5)

U18 Major: 1st Jacob Watson (5/5), 2nd Mikey Watson (4/5) 3^rd  equal: (3/5)  Orla Dorman, James Merriman and Eoin Moore

The full crosstabs are now published at: http://www.kjca.org/result/162

The top performing primary school at the tournament was The Pointers School and the top secondary school was Knole Academy.

For further photos of the prizewinners, please look at our facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/kentjuniorchess/?hc_ref=ARQ-F-n4L13XIHyWBnA-RtO-hkN7QH8nR7rngpne3cbWBCnJkR5N7PBsxYeMoPh9MG8

Well done to everyone who played, from experienced county players to those at their first chess tournament. We hope everyone enjoyed both some great chess games and spending time with your friends.

It takes a lot of work and willing volunteers to organise a large and successful chess tournament.

Extra thanks go to Mikhail Sedykh for doing the Tournament Director and GM John Emms for coming along to support the tournament and help in the playing hall.  Also helping in the playing hall were  John Merriman, Rejean Dupius, Cosmin Oprea, Gary Dorman and Jo Wildman.    

Other kind volunteers on the day were: Kathryn Woodward for booking and liaising with the venue and helping with registration, Cosmin Oprea for bringing along the equipment, Emma Holmes for her role as treasurer and also helping with registration, Samantha Metcalfe who organised the trophies and medals for the prizewinners and Conrad Allison who offered game analysis and training on the day.

KJCA is run by volunteers to develop chess opportunities for children and young people in Kent and South East London.

We are looking for some additional helpers to help out this season.  Please do consider it as our organisation thrives on volunteers and it is great to work together to create good events and opportunities for our children and young people.

Please speak to one of the team at our tournaments or contact us via webmaster@kjca.org or directly to Jo Wildman, current chair of the committee, on jowildman@hotmail.com or 07583337307.

Finally, thanks go to Tonbridge Girls’ Grammar School for use of the fantastic school venue and providing good quality catering in the sixth form block.     

Welcome to or welcome back to the chess coaching days at the KJCA for the 2017-18 season.

I can tell you, our GM led coaching is the envy all the other counties around the country and are clearly a contributing factor to our national success.  We follow the courses for the Institute of Chess levels.

To start, please be sure to carefully read the training FAQs that you will find under the ‘training’ tab at the top of this page.  http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=training

The date for this season are as follows:

PLEASE NOTE: When enrolling your child (via the ‘events’ page), you ensure that you are registering for the correct sessions. For the 4 day courses (Levels 3-5) your fee will cover you for all of those days (plus the exam at the end) and we recommend you attend preferably all, but at least 3 of the 4 in order to maximise your understanding and give yourself the best chance to get a good result.

Provided you (i.e. your son or daughter) achieved a merit or distinction at the previous level you sat, we are happy for you to move up and hence register for the next level. If you obtained a ‘pass’ at any level, then clearly there are good things that have been taken on board but we recommend that you re-take that course to help you get to grips with all of the topics involved. Moving up ‘too soon’ only leads to further problems down the line and it really isn’t fun when too much material is going over a child’s head. Please note it is not a race to see who can get through all the exams as quickly as possible and rather all about discovering and understanding different aspects of the game that can be applied when they sit down and play their matches.

We really want our coaching days to be fun but by the same token we don’t want anyone spending a day listening to things that they already totally understand. Specifically, with regards to levels 1 and 2 and new arrivals to the coaching days, boys and girls will be assessed on the first morning of attendance to check they are in an appropriate group. When registering you will see that as levels 1 and 2 are only two day courses - with the first exams sat at the end of CD2. (The courses then run again on CD3 and CD4, so,  f your child is a beginner but you feel may be a quick learner and were hoping to join level 3 next season, then for example level 1 in CDs 1 and 2 with the intention of doing level 2 in CDs 3 and 4 makes sense.)

Young children will have adult assistance when taking tests and although there will be an alternative exam date or two laid on for those unable to attend CD4, whatever the level there is absolutely no compulsion to take an exam should a child feel unprepared or anxious.

If I could just kindly ask that you don’t leave it too late to enrol as that makes my life easier when obtaining the other coaches. Hope to see you all soon!

Grandmaster Chris Ward