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            

Shreyas achieved a fantastic 8/9 in the U8 Open section making him joint First on points and receiving the 2nd Place Silver Trophy on tie-break. ...

GP1 - The first tournament of the new season will be held this Saturday, 16th September, at Tonbridge girls' grammar school.

This event is a LJCC qualifier for U8, U10 and U12 and also has the popular U18 minor and U18 major section for older players.

Please go to: http://www.kjca.org/event/162 to register. If you plan to come along, please register before 7pm the day before the tournament (Friday 15th). 

Looking forward to welcoming all our young chess players to the new season.

KJCA is affiliated to the English Chess Federation (ECF) which is the governing body of chess in England.

The ECF administers a grading system for chess and all games played in KJCA Grand Prix are submitted to the ECF for rapid-play grading. 

Every six months the ECF publishes its new grading list and Kent Juniors will be able to see how their performances have effected their grade on the ECF web-site at www.ecfgrading.org.uk/menu.php. 

To give you an idea of what to aim for: our head coach GM Chris Ward has an ECF Grade of 240, the Kent Board 1 at the EPSCA U11 in 2017 had a grade of 136 and the Kent Board 12 at the EPSCA U9 in 2017 had a grade of 69.

You will also see on the ECF grading website whether you are a member of the ECF. 

All young chess players are able to get Silver junior membership free of charge for one year.

The KJCA strongly encourages all players to take advantage of this offer, especially if they are hoping to develop their chess by playing in additional tournaments such as the London juniors or other local and county tournaments.  

Also, as an affiliate organisation, KJCA pay a fee to ECF for grading all our games. If our young players are not members of ECF then the expense to us is higher.

To take advantage of the offer of free Silver junior membership for new members  - Please email the ECF Office [membership@englishchess.org.uk] or call Gary Willson on: 01424 775 222, stating the player’s name, address, and date of birth. Please also identify KJCA as the player’s club.

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

Wow another lovely GP event this weekend,  ending a truly wonderful season of big attendances and brilliant individual and team results. In coming 4^th 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 3^rd 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