Kent take joint first place in the U11 EPSCA National Final!

Wow, what a day and what a superb result!

Huge congratulations to our young Kent U11 team for taking an extremely hard fought first place at the U11 National finals against some of the strongest opposition faced in many years. It was a nail biting finale to the EPSCA 2014/15 chess season and words cannot possibly do justice to the dramas, tribulations  and the excitement of the day. It was a pleasure to see the true Kent team spirit emerge as events unfolded at Nottingham High School on the 9 May 2015.

A big well done to each and every one of our players who all dug deep and stepped up for the occasion, playing their part in securing this hugely memorable result for the county. It was a day to truly be proud to be a part of Kent Junior Chess.

The victorious team, in alphabetical order (a tribute and our appreciation to the huge effort from all of our players), was as follows:

Robert Akeya-Price, Ben Barton, Adit Bhavesh, Sam Cartwright, Nikhil Chidipothu, David Dallakyan, Oliver Dobson, Orla Dorman, Alex Garfield, Huseyin Gueriane, Annalise Hansen, Navieinaah Haridas, Aditya Jain, Viktor Jamroz, Ximan Mao (Captain), Charlie Metcalfe, Aryan Narayan, Freddie Nunn, Rajeiv Ratnesan, Ranesh Ratnesan, Kiran Shiatis, Mahuaa Verma, Mikey Watson and Haolin Zhao.

Thank you also to Kimball Catling, Thomas Crawley-Boevey and Moad Shamekh for their part in helping us through the qualify stages at the Zonal.

There were 16 Associations taking part on the day, which had qualified out of the original 26, all competing for the coveted U11 National Title over three rounds.

The team spirit of Kent’s young guns was high, with the players gathering in the morning full of excitement and anticipation, eager for the team talks and to get stuck into the first round. It was a team with a good combination of experience, enthusiasm and youth; some playing in their first U11 national final and some in their fifth and last, all conducting themselves with the utmost grace and maturity.

Right from the go, it was clear that our players were not there to merely make up the numbers but to compete at the very highest level; with a solid score of 15 out of 20 in the first round. This score placed us in a four way tie for first with Oxfordshire, Wey Valley and Barnet.

The Kent team showed their strength in round 2 with an excellent 17.5 out of 20, a score which could only be matched by Barnet, the two teams now tying in first place with 32.5 points each, with Sussex and Wey Valley close behind in joint third with 30 points.

It was all to play for, in round three. The team talks were crucial in re-energising our players; it was clear that no one wanted to go home empty handed.

Wey Valley and Kent started the third round strongly, Kent momentarily surging ahead. Barnet then rallied and pushed hard towards the end, with Sussex faltering slightly under the strain. The lead constantly changed hands as each result came in. With just a few games left playing in the hall, it was between us, Barnet and Wey Valley with less than 1.5 points separating the three teams.

Our players finished with a strong 15.5 points out of 20, bringing our total to 48. Wey Valley finished with 16.5, not quite enough to close the gap, leaving them slightly adrift with 46.5, but Barnet managed 15.5 as well, equalling our overall score of 48.

Previously at the qualifying zonal back in March, only a tie break could separate Barnet and Kent. This time, not even the tie-break could split the teams - with both teams having an equal number of wins and draws. The team managers from both Kent and Barnet got together and magnanimously agreed the National title would be shared between the two Associations – with Kent taking the first place individual trophies and Barnet taking the overall Chessboard Winners Trophy to be engraved.

Team results were as follows:

1          Kent 48            (46 wins)

=          Barnet 48 (46 wins)

3          Wey Valley 46.5

4          Sussex 42.5

5          Nottinghamshire 37.5

6          Hertfordshire 36.5

7          Oxford 34.5

8          Essex 31

9          Richmond 29.5

10        Yorkshire 20.5 (17 wins)

=          Berkshire 20.5 (17 wins)

12        Oldham 20

13        Cheshire & N. Wales 17.5

14        Lancashire 17

15        Northants 16

16        Manchester 14.5

Full results have been published on:

http://www.oxfordfusion.com/epsca/index.cfm

A huge thank you to all the players, parents, supporting siblings, GM Chris Ward (for his inspiration), Rohan Shiatis (for his coaching and team talks at the zonal), our president Anil Anilkumar, our team managers Andrew and Krishna Shiatis, all the great coaches working hard behind the scenes in Kent, the team at Nottingham Junior Chess, to EPSCA and to Barnet and Kent for their superb sportsmanship.

Finally a big thank you to all the great volunteers at the KJCA who help to keep the Kent Juniors consistently strong every year; this being our 7^th EPSCA national title over the three annual EPSCA events (U11s, U9s and the U11 Girls) in the last seven years and our 15^th top three finish in the last eight years! A phenomenal achievement! It has been a pleasure to have been a part of the managing team/KJCA for this period.

Best wishes to all and a big thank you from

Andrew and Krishna

U11 KJCA Team Managers

Congratulations to the four Kent Juniors who played at the trials for the England U11 team and National Junior Chess Squad, held in Liverpool over the weekend of the 25th - 26th April.
 
The trial is a closed tournament and in order to qualify, players must get two norms (usually a score of 4 points or more) from national tournaments throughout the season.  Qualifying to play at the trial is an achievement in itself. There were forty of the top players from around the country competing and the standard of chess was very high. 
 
The results from the Kent boys were fantastic. 
 
Ximan Mao finished with a superb 5.5 out 6, which won him the event and guaranteed selection. 

Both Ranesh Ratnesan and Mikey Watson also got enough points to be selected for the England Squad and U11 team, with scores of 5 and 4.5 respectively.

Rajeiv Ratnesan got 3.5, so missing out by only half a point, however he gained a half norm to go toward future selection. 

All four boys were great representatives for Kent Juniors and played quality chess throughout the weekend.

The ECF run an English Youth Chess Championship which is based on scores from national events run throughout the academic year. 

We have three winners this year, Giranth Haridas became the U14 Champion, Haolin Zhao the U9 champion and Radha Ratnesan the U8 Girl’s Champion. 

Congratulations to all three who will have their names added to our Roll of Honour list which can be found on:

http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=honour

Current and past winners of the English Youth Championship titles can be found on the following link:

http://englishchess.org.uk/Juniors/champions/john-robinson-junior-gp/

Please follow the link below for more information:

http://englishchess.org.uk/Juniors/play/english-youth-gp/english-youth-championship-grand-prix/

Kent U9s finished a very creditable 4th from the 19 teams competing at the EPSCA finals in Northampton on Saturday April 25^th 2015, just 1 point behind third and four points behind the winners, Barnet.

The team started cautiously in round 1 with 8/12 leaving us in fifth place. Although on paper this looked a slow start there were some great individual performances with the team winning most of the first nine games played and then being edged out in some very tight games from strong positions as the games approached the time limit.

Chris reminded the group that team could have slow start and bounce back strongly and the team responded scoring a resounding 10/12 to end the second round on 18/24 and climbing to third place overall just behind Cambridgeshire on 20 and Barnet on 19.

The momentum from the second round continued into the third round with the team winning the first seven games completed and looking very capable of scoring ten plus points again. After the strong start the results became much harder and we finished the round on 8.5/12 scoring 26.5 points in total. Although a top three score in most other years, it was not enough to overtake Barnet finishing with 30.5 and Cambridgeshire finishing with 28 and also not enough to prevent a stong finishing Hertfordshire team from overtaking us.

All the team made valuable contributions with everyone working very hard in every round and improving immensely from their zonal performances. Thanks to Chris for insightful coaching and all the parents for being very supportive throughout the day.

1st: Barnet 30.5/36

2nd Cambs 28

3rd Herts 27.5

4th Kent 26.5

5th= Essex, Wey Valley 23

7th= Sussex, Glamorgan

9th= Notts 20.5

John Merriman

U9 Team Manager

Our sixth GP of the 2014/15 season attracted a fantastic turnout of 90 players participating across 4 sections. The event was held on Sunday 19^th April 2015 at the picturesque setting of The Schools at Somerhill.

First of all a special mention and thank you to all the parents and children who volunteered their time to help out at the event – without your help and support we would not be able to run such well attended GPs.

A big thank you to Vijay who took many excellent pictures on the day, many of which can be seen on our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/#!/kentjuniorchess.

Congratulations to all the children who played at GP 6. The whole day was conducted in a fun and very strong sporting-like atmosphere.

Special congratulations go in particular to the top three and prize winners in each section:

U9: 1st Jai Singh Chaturvedi (5.5/6), 2nd equal Dominic Coates and Logan Fear (5/6), the second place trophy going to Logan and the third place trophy going to Dominic on the performance tie breaker.

U11: 1st Alex Garfield (5.5/6), 2nd equal David Dallakyan, James Merriman and Adit Bhavesh (5/6) with Adit winning the second place trophy on the performance tie breaker. David and James though could not be separated in third place through the performance tie breaker and both receive third place trophies.

U14 (which was merged with the U18s on the day): 1st equal were Charlie Metcalfe, Nikhil Chidipothu, Mahuaa Verma and Aurideep Nayak (3/5), Charlie winning the first place trophy, Aurideep the second place trophy and Mahuaa the third place trophy on the performance tie breaker.

U18: 1st equal Rohan Shiatis and Alejandro Ito-Aramendia (4.5/5), 3rd equal Kiran Shiatis and Ximan Mao (4/5).

Top performing school groups were:

Primary: Home Educated (Primary School) (69.3)

Secondary: St Andrews (48)

Full cross tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/result/99.

It could not be closer in the primary age group sections. In the U9 section just 15 and a half points separate the top nine players and first and second are currently only separated by 0.4 points. The top in the U11 section are only separated by 1.6 points and the two primary schools are only separated by 0.2 points.

Current leaders of the GP tables after this event are as follows:

U9: Yong Gui Wang

U11: Kiran Shiatis

U14: Anantha Anilkumar

U18: Rohan Shiatis

Primary: Home Educated (Primary School)

Secondary: St Olave’s Grammar

Full GP tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=GPTables.

Many thanks to The Schools at Somerhill for accommodating us and for letting us use their beautiful school, and once again a big thanks you to all our volunteers.

Please note: GP 7 will be held at Sutton Valance on Sunday 24^th May 2015. We hope to see many of you there once again.

Best wishes

KJCA