Leicestershire’s top U11 players put on a very good showing in the Saturday U11 event at Ilkley which also functions as an U11 England Trials qualifier. Daniel Chen won the section with 4.5/6 and Rakym Serik (playing Daniel in the last round) finished 3rd on 4/6 with Umar Syed in 9th on 3.5 pts. All three players secured half norms for England Trial qualification.
Ben Raine played in the 2 day (10 round) Intermediate (U146) 11 round event and finished creditably on 5.5 pts.
Rakhym Serik won the Kings section with a near perfect score of 3.5/4, whilst Anant Kapoor did achieve a straight 5 wins out of 5 to win the Rooks section, with Noor Datoo continuing his rapid improvement to finish 2nd= in the section with 4/5 and win the ‘Knights’ award for players graded under 150 pts on Leicester Junior Chess Club’s internal grading system.
Umar Syed finished 5th= on 4.5/6 and Jason Lv 11th= on 3.5/6 in the U12 section at the Kent Junior Grand Prix Congress recently. The event was a qualifier for the London Junior Championships in December so with those performances they qualified for the U12 Major and U12 Minor Sections respectively.
The ‘Atkins’ last took place a few years ago as a weekend Standardplay congress but was revived this year as a one day Rapidplay event with Open, U165, U140, U115 and Junior U80 sections that took place on Sunday 15th October at Leicester Grammar School.
Leicestershire Junior players were very much in evidence in all sections with particularly notable results from Tom Brown who won the U165 section and 9 year old Rakym Serik who was 1st equal in the U115 section. Shyam and Kishan Modi both played in the tough ‘Open’ section with Shyam taking a share of the U180 grading prize.
Here’s a summary of the junior results:
4th= Shyam Modi 3.5pts
10th= Kishan Modi 2.5pts
1st Tom Brown 5pts
9th Joseph Ward-Langman 2pts
13th Ben Raine 2.5pts
19th Thomas Blay 1pt
1st= Rakym Serik 5pts
4th= George Worrow-Goodin 4pts
9th= Sasha Kerbel 3pts
9th= Anika Khare 3pts
15th Umar Syed 2.5pts
16th= Alastair Mottram-Epson 2pts
Austin Meynell 4.5pts (1st U12)
Rakshai Muthusamy 4.5pts (2nd U12)
Hope Wheway 4pts (3rd U12)
Noor Datoo 4pts (2nd U10)
Ranulph Wheway 4pts (2nd U16)
Olivia Chen 3pts (1st U8)
Zaara Syed 3pts
Alex Shen 3pts (2nd U8)
Morris Walker 3pts (3rd U10)
Arook Mahajan 2.5pts (3rd U8)
Adam Kerbel 2pts
Holly Fowkes 2pts
Harry Robinson 1pt
Lindsay Pyun took the silver medal in the U9 Girls Joshua Tang also took silver in the U8s with 3.5 pts out of 5.
Kareem Patel and Khaalid Patel both scored 2 points in the U11 & U9 Boys respectively.
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
