ACADEMY FOR CHESS EXCELLENCE AND SKILLS

is pleased to announce its 7th Grand Master Chess training camp with GM Chris Ward and GM John Emms, Wednesday 6th and Thursday 7th August, 10am to 4.15pm (arrival at 9:30am).

GM Chris Ward and GM John Emms will be leading a group of four coaches, who will work with small groups of children to improve their chess awareness and skill in a fun environment.

We aim for small groups of about 10 so that we can dedicate enough attention to everyone, from experienced county players to beginners.

The cost will be £35 per child per day (£30 per child if booking 2 or more siblings).

If booking for both days, the cost is reduced to £30 per child per day (£25 per day if booking two or more siblings).

There are only 40 spaces available; to reserve a place for your child please fill in the slip below or e-mail Luca Bernardini luca@plantz.uk.com, with name, age, chess experience and ECF grade of your child if available, and which day you would like to book.

Venue: St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, Westgate Road, Beckenham, Kent, BR3 5DE 

This was the thrilling final GP of the 2013/14 season, held on Saturday 5^th July 2014 at Newstead Wood School, with many of the season GP titles still in the balance and many trophies and medals to be awarded.

Congratulations to all 92! who attended this final (almost twice as many as in the previous year); everyone settling down quickly to pay some superb games of chess. The top two in each section were:

U9: 1^st Moad Shamekh (6/6), 2^nd equal Jai Singh Chaturvedi, Misha Lello, Alexander Levin and Efe Shimwell (5/6)

U11: 1^st Arjun Gobiraj (5.5/6), 2^nd Kimball Catling and Anum Sheikh (5/6),

U14 (combined with the U18s): 1^st equal Alejandro Ito-Aramendia and Jacob Watson (3/5), 3rd equal James Elgar and Nii-Akwei Carty Bing-Pappoe (2.5/5),

U18: 1^st Anantha Anilkumar (4.5/5), 2^nd equal Michael Green and Francesco Bernardini (4/5).

Top Primary School: Claremont Primary School

Top Secondary School: St. Olave’s Grammar School

Full cross tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/result/71

This event also settled the GP championships which had been running all season long. It was fantastic seeing so many new faces and so many new schools taking part this year, making this a particularly strong season, with a special mention in terms of new schools which performed particularly well, to Claremont, Warren Road, Edgebury, Solefield, The Pointers School, Tubbenden Juniors, Beechwood Sacred Heart and Brunswick House and many more.

Thank you to all the coaches who are working hard at all the schools (feeding into the KJCA) which provide the talented youngsters which not only play at the KJCA Grand Prixes, but also go on to represent Kent in the county championships and also their country. 

The winners and runners-up of the overall GP for 2013/14 are as follows:

U9: Charlie Metcalfe with Ranesh Ratnesan second and Charlotte Bruce as top overall girl. Navieinaah Haridas was top U8 and Mason Graves-Brown top U8 boy, Yong Gui Wang was top U7 and Radha Ratnesan top U7 girl.

U11: Kiran Shiatis with Mikey Watson second (who is currently representing England at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland and will therefore receive an average score towards the overall GP) and Rhea Rentala as overall top girl. Kiran Shiatis was also top U10 and Alejandro Ito-Aramendia was top U11 in this section.

U14: Anantha Anilkumar with Francesco Bernardini second and Joelle Hakim as overall top girl. James Elgar was top U14, Joelle Hakim top U13 and Anantha Anilkumar top U12 in this section.

U18: Raunak Rao with Michael Green second and Mary Scott top overall girl. James Maguire was top U18, Raunak Rao top U17, Mary Scott top U16 and Michael Green top U15 in this section.

Primary School: Claremont Primary School (a new name on our KJCA roll of honour list and a new name to KJCA chess this season) with the Home Edders close behind in second.

Secondary School: St Olave's Grammar (winners for the seventh year in a row) with Sevenoaks second.

Full GP tables can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/site/page?view=GPTables. The winners of each section will be added to our Roll of Honour List.

Our Kent Teams produced some strong performances and some encouraging signs for the years to come.

Our U9’s came 3^rd in the EPSCA county U9s final back in April this year (full report can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/article/130), our particularly young U11 team finished a fantastic 2^nd in the EPSCA county U11 Championship held in May (full report can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/article/136) and our young girls' U11 team came 5^th in their EPSCA event. We finished a very strong 3^rd in the overall EPSCA GP a great improvement on the previous year.

Well done also to our U14 minor team which came 3^rd in the SCCU Junior Jamboree and our U12 team which came 2^nd in the NYCA Championship (full report can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/article/93).

A big well done to our U18 team which finished a brilliant 1^st at the SCCU Junior Jamboree, and will be added to our Roll of Honour list (full report can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/article/123). A severely depleted U18 team also managed 4^th at the ECF County Championships (full report can be found on: http://www.kjca.org/article/145). Our U18 minor team came a very commendable 2nd at the SCCU Junior Jamboree.

Many of our young juniors have been selected to represent England during the year, well done to Kiran Shiatis, Emily Green, Michael Green, Francesco Bernardini, Ranesh Ratnesan and Mikey Watson. Their names will be added to our Roll of Honour list.

A big thank you to Newstead Wood School for accommodating us and providing such a superb venue for our final event of the season.

A special thank you to:

Chris Ward GM for his coaching expertise and team support throughout the year.

Anil Anilkumar, our president and for bringing all the teams together in what has been another strong season for Kent.

Samantha Metcalfe for all her hard, hard work with catering and taking on helping to manage trophies going forward.

Our treasurer, tournament director and website and facebook updater Andrew Shiatis.

Our communications manager Krishna Shiatis.

James Mao and Tarun Nayak for their web expertise

Luca Bernardini for setting up and running our KJCA internet club with Chesskid

Sue Maguire for arranging each of the 8 events and our coaching days.

Sian Dubery for assisting and running tournament director

There have been so many helpers throughout the year making it very difficult to mention you all by name, but all the help you give to this volunteer organisation is truly appreciated.

Thank you also to all the team managers who volunteer their time to organise the teams and help support the children at each of our events.

And of course to all the parents and children without whom we would not have such a great county organisation, one which is revered by all other counties.

We hope you had fun at our events and that you have a relaxing summer break. We look forward to seeing you all again next season.

We will post the dates of our GPs and coaching days on the KJCA and the ECF websites as soon as possible.

Our GP 1 will be held at Rosemead Prep on Sunday 14^th September 2014 and we look forward to seeing you all there. To register please follow the following link: http://www.kjca.org/event/79

Have a great Summer from all at the KJCA

Our Kent under 18 (open) Team ventured to the outskirts of Surrey on Sunday 29^th 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