The 2nd Leicester HE Atkins Memorial Rapidplay will take place on Sunday 7th October 2018 at Leicester Grammar School. It’s an ECF graded 6 round Swiss rapidplay (20 mins + 10 sec) in Open, U165, U140, U115 and Junior U80/U40 sections. The Junior U40 section would be suitable for inexperienced players.

Click here for Online Entry and full details

Current Entries: Open, U165, U140, U115, Junior U80, Junior U40

Any queries to Andy Morley (email: a.morley953@btinternet.com Tel. 0116 2831488/0776 9721980) or Paul Mottram (Junior sections) (email: chess@paulmottram.com tel: 0798 9151175)

In a combined Kings/Rooks section Adam Kerbel won the Kings (>ECF 45) with 4.5/5pts, whilst Aarav Sinha narrowly won the Rooks with 3/5pts on tiebreak from Alan Sharia.

The Knights section was won by Arav Ajaykumar with 4.5/5pts.

There were some outstanding performances by a select group of Leicestershire Juniors at the British Championships at Hull in early August. Many of them competed in multiple sections but particularly eye catching was Shyam Modi’s 6/9 for 13th in the Major Open (2nd only to the Championship section in prestige), Tom Brown’s win in the U1900s with 5/5, and Jason Lv’s 2nd= (4/5) in the Yates U1600 Weekend competition.

Major Open (77 entries)
13th Shyam Modi 6/9
40th Tom Brown 4.5/9
41st Kishan Modi 4/9

U1900 (46)
1st Tom Brown 5/5

U1750 (78)
18th= Daniel Chen 3/5
18th=Jason Lv 3/5

Weekend U1600 (Yates) (53)
2nd= Jason Lv 4/5

Rapidplay (91)
26th= Tom Brown 5/9
63rd= Jason Lv 3.5/9

U12 (39)
18th= Jason Lv 3.5/7
32nd= Daniel Chen 2/7

U11 (60)
17th Daniel Chen 3.5/6

U10 (36)
28th Olivia Chen 2.5/7

U9 (68)
36th Olivia Chen 3/6

U8 (48)
36th Olivia Chen 2/6
45th Catherine Lv 1/6

The UK Schools Chess Challenge Midland Gigafinal took place in Solihull on the weekend of the 7th/8th July. Shyam and Kishan Modi both qualified for the Terafinal both finishing with 5pts (out of 6) in U14 and U15-18 sections respectively.

The following scored 4pts and qualify for one of the UK Schools Chess Challenger events:

Arooj Mahajan (U8 Boys), Kajus Mikalajunas (U8 Boys),  Madhav Eradi (U8 Boys), Joshua Tang (U8 Boys), Sophie Mehta (U8 Girls), Alex Cimurs (U9 Boys), Tom Brown (U15-18), Ben Raine (U15-18)

A few Leicestershire Juniors played in the UK Schools Chess Challenge Northern Gigafinal on the weekend of the 14th/15th July.

Jason Lv (5.5/6) and Milly Kotecha (4/6) had outstanding results to win the U11 Boys and U13 Girls sections respectively. Both qualify for the Terafinal as did Lindsay Pyun who finished 3rd in the U9 Girls with 4.5pts. Daniel Chen scored 4pts in the U11 Boys to qualify for the Challenger event.

Leicestershire Juniors had the following results at the Rugby Junior Open on Sunday 1st July:

In the top U11A section (for players graded > 75) Jason Lv won a bronze medal scoring 3/5.

In the U11B section (ECF 50-75), Kajus Mikalajunas had an outstanding performance winning the section and all 5 games. Lindsay Pyun (2.5) and Joshua Tang (1) also played in the section with Lindsay winning a bronze medal.

In the U11C (ECF 25-50) section, newcomer Kori Lee won a silver medal with 4/5 and Sophie Mehta a bronze medal with 3/5.

In the U11D (< ECF 25) section Lailim Ryskali won a silver medal with 3.5/5 and Avnish Patel a bronze with 2.5/5.

Leicestershire Junior Chess Club held their last Mini-Rapidplay of the season on Saturday with a record equalling entry of 36. Sasha Kerbel won the Kings section with a perfect score of 4/4. Kajus Mikalajunas won the Rooks sections 4/5 on tie break over Adam Kerbel and Zaara Syed won the Knights section with 4/5 again on tie break over Aarav Sinha, Khaalid Patel and Ayesha Narvel.

A small select group of Leicestershire Juniors played in this Northamptonshire Schools Chess Asssociation event in Wellingborough on the 23rd June.

Kajus Mikalajunas won the U8s with 5/6 with Joshua Tang on 4/6. Joshua won the U8 section for his performances over the whole grand prix series of NSCA events.

In the U9s, Lindsay Pyun was 2nd but first girl with 4.5/6 and Noor Datoo scoring 4/6.

Ben Raine scored 3.5/6 in the U18 section.

At the Northamptonshire & Leicestershire Megafinal at Wellingborough on the 12th May, Leicestershire Juniors were well to the fore with 9 section winners (Supremos/Supremas) This is the full list of gigafinal qualifiers (3.5 pts or higher required) for the next regional stage :

U7 Girls: Catharine Lv – 4.5 pts (Suprema), Olivia Chen – 4 pts (2nd)

U8 Boys: Kajus Mikalajunas – 5.5 pts (Supremo), Joshua Tang – 5pts (2nd), Madhav Eradi – 4pts

U8 Girls: Lailim Ryskali – 3.5 pts (Same points as Suprema)

U9 Boys: Alex Cimurs – 4 pts (2nd), Noor Datoo – 4 pts

U9 Girls: Lindsay Pyun – 5 pts (Suprema), Holly Fowkes – 3.5 pts

U10 Boys: Aryan Ankolekar – 4 pts (2nd)

U11 Boys: Jason Lv – 5 pts (Supremo), Daniel Chen – 5 pts (2nd), Umar Syed – 4.5 pts

U12 Boys: Adam Kerbel – 3.5 pts (Supremo)

U12 Girls: Anika Khare – 4.5 pts (Suprema)

U13 Girls: Millie Kotecha – 4 pts (Suprema)

U14 Boys: Kishan Modi – 5.5 pts (Supremo)

U15 Boys: Shyam Modi – 5 pts (Supremo), Sasha Kerbel 3.5 pts (2nd)

U16 Boys: Ben Raine – 3.5 pts

The previous weekend (5th May) at the Nottinghamshire Megafinal, Evan Miles scored an impressive 5.5 pts in the U9 Boys qualifying for the Gigafinal with ease, but unsatisfactorily not having the opportunity to play the boy who was awarded the Supremo title with the same points score.

Sasha Kerbel won the combined Kings/ Rooks section in the Saturday chess club mini rapidplay competition on Saturday 5th May with 4 straight wins. Alex Cimurs won the Rooks award as the best ranked player from that section (ecf <65) on 3pts.

The Knights section featured 17 players with many playing their first chess club mini- rapidplay. Sophie Mehta won the section on 4pts out of 5 on tie break from Holly Fowkes and Lailim Ryskali by virtue of her first loss being in the last round of the competition.

Full Results are here:  Kings/Rooks, Knights

The next mini rapidplay will take place on June 2nd.

Leicestershire finished 12th out of the 15 teams that competed in EPSCA (English Primary Schools Chess Association) U11 final in Birmingham on the 21st April.

With the addition of the strong Southern Counties teams the standard was clearly a lot higher then the Northern Zone Qualifier and it should be noted that Leicestershire again finished 2nd out of the 5 teams from the North despite more than half the team being U9. Apparently Leicestershire haven’t qualified for this final since 2004 (and then didn’t contest the final) so progress is definitely being made at junior level.

Daniel Chen did particularly well on board 2 being unbeaten with 2 wins and a draw and a trio of under 9 players Kajus Mikalajunas (aged 7), Noor Datoo, and Alex Cimurs did very well to score 2 wins out of 3.

Full results are here