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Upcoming Events
KJCA GP7 2018-19 (2 entries)
Venue: Chislehurst Girls School
Event Type: Individual Tournament
KJCA GP8 2018-19 (2 entries)
Venue: Bromley High School
Event Type: Individual Tournament
Recent Results
KJCA GP4 2018-19 (Crosstabs)
Venue: The Cornwallis Academy
Event Type: Individual Tournament
2nd ECF SE Girls' Rapidplay (Crosstabs)
Venue: Chislehurst Girls School
Event Type: Individual Tournament
KJCA GP3 2018-19 (Crosstabs)
Venue: Bullers Wood School
Event Type: Individual Tournament
News
KJCA 2017-18 Season – Save the Dates
We hope that everyone has had a fun and relaxing summer break and now looking forward to a new and exciting junior chess season.
The 2017-18 season runs from September 2017 - June 2018 and we will be running our popular series of Grand Prix tournaments and Grand Master led Coaching Days, based on the successful institute of chess exams.
The first GP tournament, which is also a qualifier for the London Junior Chess Championships at U8, U10 and U12, will be held on Saturday 16th September on Tonbridge Girls’ Grammar School. For more details and to register, please go to: http://www.kjca.org/event/162
The rest of this season’s GP tournaments are planned as follows:
GP1 – Saturday 16th September 2017 – Tonbridge Girls’ Grammar School
GP2 – Sunday 22nd October 2017 – Bishop Justus School, Bromley
GP3 – Sunday 19th November – Bullers Wood School, Bromley
GP4 – Saturday 6th January 2018 – Cornwallis Academy, Maidstone
GP5 – Sunday 11th February 2018 – Dulwich College, London
GP6 – Sunday 4th March 2018 – Venue (tbc)
GP7 – Sunday 13th May 2018 - Crofton Junior School, Orpington (tbc)
GP8 Final – Sunday 3rd June 2018 – Bromley High School
Coaching Days
The coaching days this season will be held on:
CD1 – Sunday 8th October – Sevenoaks Primary School
CD2 – Sunday 12th November – Sevenoaks Primary School
CD3 – Sunday 28th January – Barming Primary School
CD4 - Sunday 18th February – Sevenoaks Primary School
As usual, we will be offering the Institute of Chess levels. Please note that we are currently updating the KJCA website to improve the coaching pages so further details and registration will available very soon. If you have any queries, please contact webmaster@kjca.org
Great results for Stakhey and Denis at the World Cadets Rapid & Blitz Championships
Two of our regular Kent junior team players represented England: Denis Dupuis played in the U8 Open sections and Stakhey Sedykh in the U10 Open.
In the first two days, the boys competed in the Rapid Championship. Denis started sensationally and ended the first day on perfect 4 points out of 4. The second day was harder but still Denis finished on very good 6 out of 9.
For Stakhey, the pairings put him playing against an almost endless raw of Russian players, but he was up to the challenge, played some great chess and ended up on respectable 5 out of 9.
The last day was a one-day Blitz Championship where competitors had to play all nine games in three hours. The results of this very intensive trial mirrored the Rapid Championship: Denis finished with 6 points and Stakhey with 5 points out of 9.
Some great chess and consistent results confirmed that our boys deserved their places in the top half of respective final cross tables. Big Swiss tournaments usually have many players tied for their places. In both competition, Denis managed to get his foothold in the Top 20, and Stakhey got his name recorded as a Top 60 player in the world.
Last but not least, Denis and Stakhey got the first and the second best results of all English players across all sections.
A big congratulations to both Denis and Stakhey for being such great representatives of Kent junior chess.
Final Thoughts for the season from GM Chris Ward
Wow another lovely GP event this weekend, ending a truly wonderful season of big attendances and brilliant individual and team results. In coming 4th at the U-11 EPSCA final (in adding to our excellent boys and girls team performances up until then) our ultra-young team helped ensure that for the first time since 2009, Kent won the National Counties Grand Prix. We officially can say that Kent are the best!
In addition to the scores you can read on our cross tables, I can also now announce that the results of the final IOC (www.instituteofchess.co.uk) exams taken this season:
Level 3: Denis Dupuis-Distinction, Danny Oprea-Distinction, Vaidehi Varma-Distinction
Level 5: Dominic Coates Merit
Excellent stuff and stay tuned to the events calendar for confirmation of when our coaching days (as well as the new season of GPs) will be restarting.
We have so much budding talent (Grandmasters in the making!) and already quite a few representing England. On Saturday 3rd June: Mikey, Charlie, Aurideep, Orla, Saahil and Ciaran were amongst those representing their country in the annual match against Wales.
Whilst, two of our young regulars, Stakhey and Denis had to miss GP8 because they were playing in the Rapidplay World Cadet Championship in Minsk, Belarus!
Meanwhile we’ve already read how James, Shlok and Shreyas will be showcasing their talents in the World and European Championships later in the summer and we also have a deserved candidate up for the English Chess Federation Player Of the Year award.
In reference to this exciting opportunity, Jitendra writes about his son:
‘It is with great pleasure that we present the candidature of our son Shreyas Royal for the prestigious ECF Player of the Year Award. In many ways exceeding the challenging requirements and expectations for the award, Shreyas' ambitions, intelligence, and accomplishments complement precisely the stellar community of past recipients and make him highly deserving of the honour and opportunity bestowed by this award. We would be pleased if you go through his complete profile and endorse him for the award which in a way would inspire a lot of youngsters to take up this royal game seriously.’
Most of the other candidates on the shortlist as established Grandmasters and, whilst I certainly haven’t got a bad word to say about them, this is about player of the year this season, not best player full stop! With hard work and dedication, Shreyas has come so far so quickly and in this last year and has achieved some phenomenal results. For me, though a vote for Shreyas would be like a vote for all the talented young juniors that we have helped progress in Kent over the season. Hence I urge all those amongst you who are ECF members to please do just that on https://britchess.wufoo.eu/forms/x169pi7s1v4fj5d/
Finally none of this would be possible without the efforts of a few parents and helpers that make up the voluntarily run organisation the KJCA. They are always looking for volunteers and helpers though that don’t even need to know how to play chess! For example right now we are now in dire need of someone to run the catering at events and there are always smaller jobs that could help take the strain off of the workload of other committee members.
Please, please, please if you feel that you have a little time to spare (at events or otherwise) then do let us know on webmaster@kjca.org I cannot understate how gratefully such offers would be appreciated.
Best wishes and hope everyone has a fantastic summer
GM Chris Ward
Successful season for young Kent trio - Shlok, Shreyas and James
Winning Kent U9 team - EPSCA National Champions 2017
Congratulations to all the Kent U9 team for winning the 2017 EPSCA U9 Finals and becoming the National Champions for the second year running.
The finals were held at Nottingham high school on Saturday 22nd April. Everyone knew it was going to be a long day, starting before 7am and including travels by road, rail, underground and even on a tram.
There were 18 teams who had qualified for the finals and the competition was tough.
Despite the long journey, the Kent team were ready to take on all opponents. All the young players lived up to expectations and were determined to build on the high standards set last year (when the team won the title with 33/36 points).
All started very well, with the team scoring an excellent 11/12 in both the first and second rounds. This meant that Kent went into the final third round with a 2.5 point lead over nearest rivals Wey Valley.
However, to everyone's delight, the improving pattern continued and our last round was a clean sweep – 12/12 - wins on all boards!
All the rounds had some close games which could have gone either way, but the Kent players kept their nerves, maintained focused, increased concentration levels and eventually managed an overall victory.
Our strong finish gave Kent a clear first place, leading the runners-up by 6.5 points.
The final scores were:
1st – Kent 34/36
2nd – Wey Valley 27.5/36
3rd equal - Warwickshire and Richmond 24.5/36
Congratulations also to the players who were on the reserve boards, they all played some quality chess and special mention for Yifan Luo, who won the reserve tournament.
The reserves also completed a clean sweep of 4/4 wins in the last round of the tournament complementing the 100% score across the whole team.
The full team were: Shreyas Royal, James Merriman, Shlok Verma, Stakhey Sedykh, Arthur Chikovsky, Dennis Dupuis, Roxolana Chaban, Herb Balaam, Nour Ajili, Aneesh Sagar, Ismail Longia Zaidi, Artemiy Shkuratovskyi, George Allen, Yifan Luo, Max Bell, Amit Aryan Sanka
Many thanks to our team manager, John Merriman and to GM Chris Ward and GM John Emms for their coaching, guidance and support throughout this season.
We also appreciate the efforts from all the parents and carers, who brought the children along to both the zonal and the final competitions and continuously support their chess.
With another great result from our U9 team, the future for these promising young players looks bright. Well done to everyone.
The full results can be viewed at: http://www.oxfordfusion.com/epsca/#results