At the LRCA charity quickplay season-opener, George Worrow-Goodwin received the George Winterton trophy as Best Junior Team Player of the year, while Matthew Lo was awarded the John Robinson Trophy as Most Improved Player of the Year.
It was good to see previous winner Tom Brown playing on top board for his new club Braunstone while George represented his club Ashby and collected the Div4 trophy.

Joseph Ward-Langman and David Collyer were well in contention going into the final round in the recent Leamington Spa Rapidplay U110 section on 10th September, each eventually finishing on 4/6. Aarav Sinha also played in the Junior Section at the same congress

At the Cambridge Rapidplay on 25th September Ben Raine scored an excellent 2.5/5 in the U160 section and Joshua Tang (aged 7) did well in his first graded ECF congress to win two of his five games in the Junior U12 section.

Sasha Kerbel, Anant Kapoor and Alex Shen were the winners of the Kings, Rooks and Knights sections respectively of Leicester Junior Chess Club’s first mini-rapidplay competition of the season.

The competitions were all close with Sasha Kerbel scoring 3pts out of 4 in the Kings section along with 4 other players but winning on the cumulative scores tiebreak system having only lost in round 4. In the Rooks, Anant Kapoor won the award for the 3rd time in a row, scoring 4pts out of 5 along with 4 other players and again won on cumulative scores as his only loss came in round 5. Alex Shen picked up the Knights award (for players graded below 150 pts on LJCC gradings) with 3pts out of 5. A record 36 children took part.

Detailed results are here:
Kings
Rooks/Knights

The Terafinal section is for Northern and Southern Gigafinal age group winners, whereas the Challenger sections are for age group runners up in those competitions

Terafinal

38th Daniel Chen 2pts

Challengers A

5th Shyam Modi 4.5pts (same score as 2nd)
30th Anika Khare 3pts (22nd)
52nd Olivia Chen 1pt

Challengers B

9th Tom Brown 4.5pts (same score as 4th)
33rd Milly Kotecha 2.5pts

Leicester Juniors achieved some excellent results at the Northern and Southern Gigafinals (the regional stage of the UK Schools Chess Challenge on the weekends of the 15th/16th July and 22nd/23rd July respectively.

In the Northern Gigafinal Daniel Chen won the U10A Boys section, whilst Anika Khare and Lindsay Pyun were 2nd in the U11 girls and U8 Girls respectively. Tom Brown was 2nd equal in the U16 Boys and Milly Kotecha was also 2nd equal in the U12 Girls Southern Gigafinal. Shyam Modi was 3rd equal in the U14 Boys.

Full results of all Leicestershire players are below: Continue reading →

Leicestershire convincingly won their National U100 final against Warwickshire 8½ – 3½ at the Trident Centre, Warwick on Saturday. It’s the first time Leicestershire have won the title in this section since the the competition began in 1995/96 which is well before 8 of the 12 players (all juniors) in action for Leicestershire were born. Continue reading →

The County U100 team beat Surrey convincingly 7½ – 4½ in the National Semifinal on Saturday at Brogborough in Bedfordshire. They will now contest the final on July 1st against Warwickshire, who perhaps surprisingly knocked out Notts in a close match in the other Semifinal. Once again half the Leicestershire U100 team was made up of juniors and collectively they had a particularly successful day with all six scoring points for the team. George Worrow-Goodin (4½/5) and Joseph Ward-Langman (3½/5) remain unbeaten all season in this competition. Wins were achieved by Mike Griffiths, Stuart Hollingworth, Umar Syed, Rory Haywood and Jason Liacheng LV. The full scoresheet is here. 

The County U100 team qualified for the National Semifinals in fine style by beating Lancashire 8-4 in the their quarterfinal. The foundation of the victory was laid by a particularly strong performance from the top boards with 6 points scored from boards 1-7. Again 6 of the team were juniors and George Worrow-Goodin on board 2 lengthened his winning streak to 4 in the U100s this season. Joseph Ward-Langham, taking promotion up to board 1 in his stride, achieved a good draw and maintained his unbeaten U100 season so far. There were also victories for the Syston ‘3’ (Stuart Hollingworth, Mick Adams and Reg Agger), Paul Mottram, Thomas Blay and Paul Martin. The full scoresheet is here. Report by Paul Mottram

The UK Schools Chess Challenge Megafinal (for those qualifying from schools in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire) took place on the 13th May at Wellingborough School. Those U11s scoring 4pts (or more) and those over 11s achieving at least 3.5 pts qualified for the next stage, the Northern Gigafinal, which takes place in Manchester in July. The best boy and girl within each year band also won the Supremo/Suprema title respectively. Leicestershire had plenty of Gigafinal qualifiers on the day: Continue reading →

At the final J4NCL weekend of the season, we played one team in Div 1 and one in Div 2. Leicester Blues managed to win Div 2 despite an inauspicious start which saw the team comprehensively beaten in the first round. Thereafter the team managed to win the remaining 4 rounds to swoop into the lead for the first time at the conclusion of the last round. Having played a fine drawn game against a very highly graded player in the 1st round when playing in the reserves, Umar Syed then proceeded to win the remaining 4 games, this time playing for the team each time. Matthew Lo played in the final two rounds on Sunday and took a win and then a mature and ‘strategic’ draw to clinch the match as the final game to finish in round 5. Jason Lv also had a good weekend winning 3 games. Continue reading →