Excellent Results for Shreyas and James at the World Cadets U8 & U10 in Brazil
On the 22nd-31st August this year, more than 500 players from across the world gathered in Pocos De Caldas, Brazil to compete in the Annual World Cadets Championship for U8/U10 /U12.
Two of our regular Kent junior team players represented England: Shreyas Royal played in the U8 Open section and James Merriman in the U10 Open.
Shreyas came equal fourth in the U8 open scoring 8 out of 11 points which was an excellent achievement against the best players in the world for his age. His tournament was a story of three chapters. The first being a strong start winning his first three games to lead the tournament, before a slower middle where he lost some games against some tricky opponents, bouncing back to finish with an exceptional run of five wins out of five to push himself back amongst the leaders. Overall a great performance and with a little bit more luck in the middle Shreyas would have been confident to challenge the first three players who finished on 8.5 and 9 points respectively .Shreyas will no doubt take this momentum into the European U8 event in Romania.
James came equal 29th in the U10 finishing in the top half scoring 6 out of 11 points. James had a slow start playing some difficult opponents to finish the first week on the two points out of six. He showed a lot of resilience in second half of tournament to score an unbeaten four out of five points which included some strong results against higher rated players achieving a result which would give him great confidence for similar events in future.
A big congratulations to both James and Shreyas for being such great representatives of Kent junior chess