Congratulations to our U18 and U14 teams

A huge well done to both our U18 and U14 teams for coming a superb 2nd and 3rd at the National Youth Chess Championships on Sunday 22nd September 2013, the best performing county across both sections.

Under 18s maintain unbroken 6 year record at 2013 National Youth Chess Association Championship

On Sunday September 22^nd 2013, our 8 player Under 18 team travelled up to Northampton on an unseasonably mild day to defend our Under 18 title from 2012. With the usual high standard of county teams, it was always going to be a tough call to perform at the same level as recent years.

After round 1, we did admirably well with a score of 5/8 and were second to a very strong Berkshire team. However, matches became progressively more challenging as the rounds progressed; we scored 4.5/8 in round 2 and 3/8 in round 3. With a final score of 12.5/24, we awaited our fate with some degree of trepidation knowing that other counties were not far behind. However, our closest competitors after round 2 experienced equally challenging final rounds and we finished second out of the 7 competing counties, another great Kent performance.

Since new impetus was put into secondary school age county teams in 2008, Kent has performed remarkably well, finishing in either first or second place; 2008 2^nd, 2009 2^nd, 2010 2^nd, 2011 2^nd, 2012 1^st, 2013 2^nd.

We hope that this track record continues for many years to come.

Well done to the following players (in Board Order) who did us proud yet again to bring an excellent start to the 2013/14 season: Rohan Shiatis, Rohan Bansal, Raunak Rao, Alexei Davis, Gautham Reddiar, Jessica Wen, Michael Green, James Maguire

Tony (U18 team manager)

U14s Finish Third NYCA 2013 National Youth Chess Association Championship

Our young U14 team finished a brilliant third in the NYCA Championship. Most of our players were U12 and performed extremely well to score 10.5 out of 12 in the first round and second behind a very strong Sussex team.

Round 2 proved tough as we faced many older and more experienced players from other counties and slipped to third position just half a point behind South Wales. Unfortunately we could not improve our position in the last round despite a valiant effort from all of our players.

Kiran Shiatis finished with a perfect score of 3/3 was the nominated for best player award. Alejandro Ito-Armendia also had the perfect score of 3 out of 3. Jacob Watson won the prize for the best U14 reserve.

Of note, we were the only team to take points off the winners Sussex.

Well done to all the players. The team in board order: Jackson Wen, Anantha Anilkumar, Francesco Bernardini, Freddie Hand, Emily Green, Kiran Shiatis, Karthik Velayudham, Ronit Nair, Mikey Watson, Alejandro Ito-Armendia, Niakwei Carty Bing-Peppoe, Ximan Mao, Nikhil Chidipothu and Jacob Watson.

Anil (U14 Team Manager)