Under 18 ECF County Championship

Our Kent under 18 (open) Team ventured to the outskirts of Surrey on Sunday 29th June, to take part in the 2014 ECF Chess Championship. This year was always going to be tough, as we had lost several strong players over the last couple of years. In fact, this time round half our team were under 14s, so this was going to be challenging for those youngsters who were likely to be permanent players in our under 18 teams for years to come.

Round 1 saw us up against the eventual joint winner (Sussex) on 3 boards, from which we could only salvage half a point. However, we still pulled off a respectable 7 points out of 12 and going into Round 2, we were in fourth place, behind Herts, Sussex and Middlesex ‘A’ teams.

In Round 2, we had 3 board pairings against the other joint winner (Hertfordshire) but this time, came away with one and half points. Although we battled hard to score 6.5 points in this round, Middlesex A scored 0.5 fewer points and as a result finished in joint 4th place.

This was a valiant effort from all players and one that maintains our top 4 position in an Under 18 Open County Tournament for the past 5 years (or more).

Final Results were as follows:

Sussex 17, Herts 17, Middlesex (A) 14.5, Kent 13.5, Surrey (A) 13.5, Surrey (B) 10, Berkshire 9, Manchester 7.5, Middlesex (B) 7.

Congratulations to all our players, who were, in board order,

Patrick Smith  (Judd School)

Arul Gupta (Eltham College)

Yasmin Giles (Newstead Wood School)

Rohan Bansal (Dulwich College)

Girinath Haridas (Dulwich College)

Freddie Hand (Cage Green Primary)

Anantha Anilkumar (St Olave’s School)

Raunak Rao (St Olave’s School)

Gautham Reddiar  (Eltham College)

Michael Green (Simon Langton Boy’s School)

Francesco Bernadini (Trinity School)

Ximan Mao (Tubbenden School)


Tony Rao

Under 18 (Open) Team Manager