Menu

WSCC Home Page Official Website Rounds 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

3rd World School Championships - Round 1

Saturday 28th April 2006. 10:30 pm. Round 1 over, draw for Round 2 not yet out. It’s been a lovely couple of days weather-wise and looking back over the last 48 hours, it has been quite a journey, not entirely uneventful. I shall fill you in on all the details later, for now I need to bring you up to date on the reason we are here: chess. But first, our thanks must go to Winton Capital Management Ltd, new and welcome sponsors for a variety of English junior chess events – and our congratulations for new arrivals to David & Julia and Matthew & Minaz! Seriously, without such critical contributions the coaches do not get to eat whilst they are here. And on the subject of coaches, Damn Nice Doll pointed out the error in Calm Dandelion and suggested Midland Clone for himself – no way! Meanwhile Meander Sloth didn’t notice that Mad Haunt is an anagram, but knew who it was anyway! Say no more.

And now the Chess bit:

Having enjoyed the delights of sunny Halkidiki for 30 hours there follows a less than fortunate start for the chess players. We are urged to ensure that all the players are at their boards at 16:00, with the opening ceremony to be held at 16:30 and then the games to start straight afterwards. Well, we get to the venue and almost immediately the first signs of unrest amongst the players are seen: the U15 have been re-paired so the preparation of David, George and Ed V-R is all to no avail as they face new opponents and in a different colour! Then 16:30 comes and goes without any opening ceremony, and 20 minutes later the U13s are re-paired, this time with the result that Daniel Hunt and Patrick Stevens end up paired against each other! Imagine the scene: 400+ kids playing musical chairs without music! Whacky! As we wonder which section is next up for a last minute re-pairing (actually the Girls U15) the speeches finally start at just after 17:00. With multiple welcome speeches in 3 languages, the feeling was that this was not truly appreciated by some of the Under 7s to judge by the number of chess pieces leaving the playing surfaces and hitting walls/opponents/arbiters. Ah well, never work with animals and children as they say!

In any event, the games do finally kick-off, albeit at 17:30. Not surprisingly the players, who have been sat at their boards for 90 minutes before being allowed to start, bolt thought their openings like greyhounds from their traps. Never before has your intrepid reporter seen so much carnage within the first 20 minutes of an international tournament. Pawns are shot to pieces and pieces lie scattered around as confetti after a wedding. Queens – well, what can I say – queens have been lost already from many a board (as it later turns out, not a bad thing actually). And so it is not surprising that within the hour we have our first three results. Amazingly Lateefah, who was actually the last re-pairing and only started 20 minutes after everyone else finished first: mating in 11 moves with the Greek sacrifice. Saravanan forced a resignation after 12 and Patrick “Lightening” Stevens kept pace with but succumbing to Daniel after 35 moves.

All in all it ends up a pretty good day for England. Although we only have 11 possible points due to the pairing of Daniel against Patrick, we get 8 of those points, with Callum, George, Jessica, Ed V-R and Samuel also registering wins. David loses to the 2 nd seed in the U15 but not without holding his own for a long time. Charlie Hierons likewise plays very well and is level or even slightly ahead for much of his game but eventually loses out in his first international game. Joseph is disappointed with a loss, but knows there are still 8 rounds to go so all still to play for! Finally, Jessica gets the prize for being last out – her prize is the privilege of having to run fast from playing hall to dining room to get some food before they shut!

The full results of Round 1 are as follows:

The draw for Round 2:

After a successful first day, there are not surprisingly some very tough draws in Round 2, with George O’Toole facing the 1 st seed in the U15 and Daniel Hunt facing the 3 rd seed in the U13.

The Players’ results to date:

And now, re-introducing our new brand feature:

******** Great Chess Moments from History ********

And finally, Kids Korner!

I had lunch with a chess champion the other day. I knew he was a chess champion because it took him 20 minutes to pass the salt. (Eric Sykes)