Jason Lv, who last year won the George Winterton Cup for ‘Junior Team Player of the Year’ has been awarded the John Robinson Cup for ‘Most Improved Player’. In the last season Jason was invited to join the national junior squad and has seen his ECF grade rise from 108 to 146. Having won the County U120 championship in September 2018, Jason is currently well placed in this year’s County U160 championship with 1 game still to play (coincidentally against John Robinson!) and a chance to win the title.

Kajus Mikalajunas wins this year’s ‘Junior Team Player of the Year’ title and the George Winterton cup. Kajus was our top board U9 player last season and led possibly Leicestershire’s strongest ever U9 team to 2nd place in the Northern Zone and a fine 8th place nationally in the EPSCA county competition. Individually he also some fine performances in winning the Minor (U110) section at the Notts Rapidplay and the Kenilworth Open Junior U11 title.

Lindsay Pyun finished 2nd in the U10 Girls at the Midlands Gigafinal scoring the same number of points as the 1st place girl (they drew in their head to head game) and was only separated on tiebreak but still qualifies for the Terafinal.

An excellent 12 other Leicestershire players scored 4 points or more (out of 6) at this regional level to qualify for the Challengers Final

Midlands Gigafinal 6th/7th May

4 pts and over qualifies for the Challenger Final

U7 boys: Sam Wakelin (2.5pts)

U7 Girls: Emily Dyer (3)

U8 Girls: Catharine Lv (4)

U9A Boys: Joshua Tang (4.5), Alex Shen (4), Madhav Eradi (4), Arooj Mahajan (3)

U9 Girls: Sophie Mehta (4)

U10A Boys: Noor Datoo (4), Michal Kula (1)

U10B Boys: Aarav Sinha (4), Evan Miles (3), Alex Cimurs (3)

U10 Girls: 2nd Lindsay Pyun (5.5)

U12: Jason Lv (4.5), Henry Powell (4)

U15-18: Kishan Modi (4), Shyam Modi (4)

Northern Gigafinal 13th/14th July

U13: Anika Khare (4)

The last mini rapidplay of the season took place at Stoneygate Baptist Church and close fought competition resulted in tie breaks in all three sections

In the Kings, both Adam Kerbel and Anika Khare finished on 3pts out of 4 with Adam winning on the Buchholz tie break system by virtue of his opponents having achieved better overall scores in the competition than Anika’s opponents (obviously not something Anika could do much about!)

In the Rooks, three players (Catharine Lv, Garv Sehgal and Holly Fowkes) finished well clear of the field on 4pts out of 5 with Catherine winning on the tiebreak system.

Sam Wakelin and Oliver Brown tied on 5pts out of 6 in the Knights section with this time Sam winning on tiebreak due to having won their head to head match.

Full detailed results are here:

Kings

Rooks

Knights

Leicestershire’s juniors had a good haul of results at the recent local  UK Schools Chess Challenge Megafinals (county based) with 14 age group section winners (Supremos/Supremos) along with 11 additional qualifiers for the regional stages (Gigafinals) which take place in July. Particularly notable was Sophie Mehta’s 6/6 score in a competitive U9 section at the Northants & Leicestershire megafinal along with Lindsay Pyun’s winning 5.5pts score in winning the U10s. and Jason Lv’s unbeaten 5/6 winning score in the U12s which placed him 2nd out of the entire U18 section

The full lists of winners and qualifiers are as follows:

Northants & Leicestershire Megafinal

Supremos: Sam Wakelin (U7), Jason Lv (U12) – Supremas: Emily Dyer (U7), Catharine LV (U8), Sophie Mehta (U9), Lindsay Pyun (U10), Anika Khare (U13)

Qualifiers: Alex Shen (U9), Madhav Eradi (U9), Noor Datoo (U10)

Derby Megafinal:

Supremos: Alex Cimurs (U10), Aryan Ankolekar (U11), Daniel Chen (U12) Supremas: Olivia Chen (U8)

Qualifiers: Aarav Sinha (U10), Henry Powell (U12)

Nottingham Megafinal:

Supremos: Joshua Tang (U9), Tom Brown (U18) Supremas: Sophia Hilmi (U9)

Qualifiers: Conor Morris (U7), Arooj Mahajan (U9), Evan Miles (U10), Michel Kula (U10), Jacob Miles (U10), Ben Samworth (U11) 

Leicester Junior Chess Club’s May mini-rapidplay was held at the club’s regular venue at Westleigh on Saturday 25th May

In the Kings sections, Leo Abraham won a competitive competition with 3.5 pts out of 4. The Rooks and Knights section was combined with Catherine Lv overhauling early leader Madhav Eradi to win the Rooks with 4/5 whilst Milan Hall won the Knights section with 3pts.

Full detailed results are here:

Kings

Rooks & Knights

U18

U11

U10

U9

U8

U7

Leicestershire’s U9 team placed 8th out of 15 qualifying teams in the National final at Nottingham High School on Saturday 27th April scoring a very respectable 19.5 pts (out of 36) and only falling 1.5 pts short of a top 6 finish.

Joshua Tang (bd2) and Catharine Lv (bd8) had outstanding competitions winning all 3 games and Sophie Mehta (bd4), Alex Shen (bd7) and Rishik Madhadi (bd 11) all scored 2 wins out of 3.

The full team was: Kajus Mikalajunas, Joshua Tang, Olivia Chen, Sophie Mehta, Arooj Mahajan, Madhav Eradi, Alex Shen, Catherine Lv, Arav Ajaykumar, Martino Cresciani Lombardo, Rishik Madhadi, Muhammed Shalchi, Varad Dahi and Adeeb Syed

The full team standings with links to individual performances are here.

Leicester Junior Chess Club’s March mini-rapidplay took place at Holywell Primary School, Loughborough on Sat 30th and a record 48 children took part with a roughly even split between Leicester Junior Chess Club and Holywell Primary School Chess Club players.

In the Kings sections, Henry Powell and Lindsay Pyun both scored 3 out of 4 points. Similarly in the Rooks section Aarav Sinha and John Leay also shared a perfect record with 4 wins out of 4. In the Knights section, Rohit Sreenivas (Holywell) tied with Lexi Abraham (LJCC) on 3.5 pts.

Full detailed results are here:

Kings

Rooks

Knights

In a joint venture with neighbouring county Northants, Leicestershire entered a team into the national U11 Girls final which took place on 23rd March in Solihull and finished 10th out of 16th teams on 17.5pts (out of 36).

We had a great first round recording 8/12 and the manner of the victory’s showed that we had a team capable of playing slow and very thoughtful Chess. We were in 4^th place and only 1 point behind the leaders.

Our 2^nd round was equally solid and we scored 6.5 points. This placed us 6^th equal and only 1.5 points behind first place. It was all very close. The 3^rd round however proved to be a little of an anti-climax and after some quick losses the slipped down the order a little to their final resting position.

Of the 5 Leicestershire players in the team Olivia Chen won all three games on board 2 and Lindsay Pyun (bd1), Sophie Mehta (bd4) and Asin Dobariya (bd8) all scored 2 wins.

A full strength Leicestershire U9 team travelled to Liverpool on Sat 16th March and qualified for the National Final in some style finishing just 1 pt behind last year’s national U9 medallists Warwickshire.

Leicestershire got off to a flying start in round 1 recording 9 wins and 2 draws from 12 boards to lead by half a point from Warks and Notts. The second round went a little less well but still resulted in 8 wins to keep Leics 1/2 a point ahead of Notts but ominously Warks scored an impressive 11 points go 2.5 pts in front of Leics. At this point with the top 3 teams more than 6 points ahead of the 4th placed team, it was clear Leicestershire would win medals but of what colour?

Round 3 started badly with a couple of quick losses but thereafter, win followed win until the team had netted another 10 points from the 12 games. As in round 1 Leicestershire had outscored all their other rivals, but in the final overall scores fell just one point short of Warks in 1st place with Notts 2 points back in 3rd place. Five Leicestershire players (Joshua Tang, Olivia Chen, Arooj Mahajan, Catherine Lv and Arav Ajaykumar) scored an impressive 3 wins out of 3 and it’s interesting to note the contribution of the 3 girls in the team (Olivia, Catherine and Sophie Mehta) who had not played in the U9s in the Midland Team champs (where the U9s finished 3rd) due to being on U11 Girls team duty that day who scored a massive 8.5/9pts between them. That said, this was above all a team performance where everyone played their part and was only made possible by multiple wins almost across the board.

The full team was: Kajus Mikalajunas, Joshua Tang, Olivia Chen, Sophie Mehta, Arooj Mahajan, Madhav Eradi, Alex Shen, Catherine Lv, Arav Ajaykumar, Martino Cresciani Lombardo, Rishik Madhadi, Adeeb Syed, Oliver Brown.

Teams Scores:

1st Warks 29
2nd Leics 28
3rd Notts 26
>4th Cheshire & North Wales 17
5th Oldham 15.5
6th Manchester 15
7th Wirral 13.5
8th Lancashire 13.5
9th Tameside 12
10th Merseyside 10.5