Terafinal 2011 - Day 1

The first day of the final stage of the biggest chess tournament in the world - The UK Chess Challenge, started today at Loughborough School in Leicestershire.

52 children are taking part in the top section of this event from all over the country. Children as young as 7 years old are competing against 18 years old in this one of a kind competition.
Top seeds for the tournament include our latest International Master Yang Fan Zhou, last year's British U14 Champion Marcus Harvey, and local stars Brandon Clarke and Richard Weaving. Considering these four boys are in the top 5 juniors in the country, we know we are in for a VERY strong competition!

The girls competition is one of the strongest I have seen with the number of strong girls extremely high this year. The Wang sisters are probably strong favourite to battle for the title, Williams style in tennis, but Sheila Dines has more experience on them and has just had a great performance in the Championships in the British this year winning the British U18 Girls title. Most of the girls in the Terafinal have been chosen to represent England in this year's European and World Youth, including Chantelle Foster, U13 British Girls' Champion Katherine Shepherd and U10 British Champion Akshaya Kalaiyalahan. I can't wait to see how this tournament pans out as these girls can all challenge the boys at the top.

The UK Chess Challenge sports the football 3,1 scoring system and so those who draw are penalised, which encourages the games to be fully fought out. After the first day, three rounds have passed and the top four seeds are all on 100% as well as Anand Krishnan, 195, from Wilsons School and Jean-Luc Weller, 189, fresh from his good performance in the Major Open this year.

We will be seeing the big games tomorrow on the top boards so it should be an exciting watch. Commentary is being provided by former STRAT Ben Purton and last year's Top Girl Lateefah Messem-Sparks.

The top girl's score at the moment is 6 points, but they have only lost to the top players and gave them such a good game and the result does not reflect their play as I think that these girls deserve a lot more credit. Akshaya gave Brandon Clarke a good scare in the first round as we watched and worried for the 3rd seed. He also had another shaky round in round 3, but played some accurate moves to finish off top girl seed Maria Wang. Meanwhile, in round 2, her sister Anna found herself on top board against our top junior Yang Fan, whilst northern girl Rachel Cass faced 4th seed Richard Weaving. Both had drawable endgames but unfortunately the experience and ability of the top seeds shone through to lead them to perfect scores.

So going into round 3, the girls on 6 points include: Anna and Maria Wang, Anna York-Andersen, Rachel Cass and Chantelle Foster. Just behind is Emila Jewell on 5 points who faces local rival Anna York-Andersen tomorrow morning. Anna has already beaten a close competitior Akshaya Kalaiyalahan this evening and so got one of the way. Trailing behind but we can't rule her out is Sheila Dines. We predict she will storm back with some wins tomorrow which will really put the pressure on.

We will try to update as the day goes along!

Success at the British Chess Championships 2011

With all the palaver taking place in the run up to this year's British Chess Championships, we had a lot to sort out. Being told we were not allowed to use the venue was less than helpful and we secured a meeting room in a local hotel which caused a lot of additional expenses. However, it was nice to have a guaranteed nice room to coach in. Unfortunately, we did not predict the complicated layout of the town centre which meant we had to cross over tram lines and busy roads, making it very unsuitable for the young children to walk to as well as being inconvienient. A terrible nuisance and a waste of money.

This year's British Chess Championships was held at Ponds Forge Leisure Centre in Sheffield which was a good leisure centre in itself but when you are second best to the National ASA Swimming Championships, it becomes quite an annoyance.

Ponds Forge Leisure Centre, Sheffield

We arrived on Sunday 24th July to try and catch the end of the Rapidplay and the venue was absolutely buzzing, but not with chess players! There were swimmers everywhere and what seemed like every member of the swimmers' families! There was absolutely nowhere to sit! We hoped that it would be much quieter once the tournament started so we arrived on Monday morning at 8.30am eager to get some coaching going. However, the situation was no better - the swimmers arrived at 6.30am and took up every available seat! This was going to be a lot more difficult that we thought.

Once the children had started their games, I spent the morning in the cafe like a predator in the jungle. I was on full alert watching the swimmers and their families eat and as soon as they had finished, I would pounce! I would jump in and grab their tables and chairs! I did this until I had enough for all the students and their parents. It was hard work!

During the first week our students consisted of:

• Imogen Turvey-Cross (U11)
• Zakary Warsop (U11)
• Eva Ressel (U11)
• Cosima Keen (U13)
• Angelica Fitzpatrick (U13)
• Chantelle Foster (U16)
• Chris Strong (U140)
• Charlie Keen (U140)
• Amy Hoare (Major Open)
• Adam C Taylor (Major Open and U13)

Imogen and Cosima were playing "up" an age group this week and were using it as practise for the next week so there was some testing of new openings and ideas in their games.

Our students were the lower end of the rating list in each section and some had not had much tournament experience but we still had some good results. The most notable performances were from:

Eva Ressel who is now British U11 Girls' Champion with Beatrice Steele. Eva was graded 41 before the tournament so this was a very notable result as she actually beat Beatrice in their direct encounter. Eva was one of our best learners for the tournament, playing new ideas in each game and soaking in all the information we gave her!

Eva with her British U11 Girls' Trophy

Cosima Keen, despite playing up an age group became U13 British Girls' Champion and Angelica Fitzpatrick was just half a point behind her in second place.

Chantelle Foster just missed out on the U15 British Girls' title to Radha Jain despite getting the same score as the U16 British Girls' Champions. It was calculated rather bizarrely and I am just lucky that in my day, I was allowed to win both!

Adam C Taylor really pushed himself this week as he was playing in both the U13 British and Major Open, but it didn't seem to tire him out as he managed to come 2nd place in the British U13. A fantastic performance by him, only losing to the top seed and drawing to the champion, narrowly missing out on the title himself! Well done Adam, we're really proud of you!

Amy Hoare, one of our leading girls chose not to enter a junior age group and was getting the experience in the Major Open. She had in fact qualified for the British Championships, but wanted to ease her way in with the Major Open. She had a great first week and was on 3/6 with a TPR of 2102.

Amy Hoare in the Major Open

Charlie Keen also did well in the U140s, scoring 2.5/5 against a strong and performing 28 points above his grade!!

Charlie Keen and Chris Strong in the U140 (on the right)

The weekend was a busy one due to all the younger age groups cramming their championships into one weekend! We had four students in the U9 age group and Zak's younger brother Dan entered the U8.

Danyal finished on 2/6 but this was his first big tournament and he was rather overwhelmed by it. I was very pleased with the way he played and he was extremely unlucky in his games as he was winning most of them and fell for some nasty tricks, but we know that he has learnt the hard way.

Our U9 students were: Francesco Bernardini, Koby Kalavannan, Calum Baker and George Ivanov. We had some extremely good performances in that tournament with George and Koby coming joint 4th and Francesco coming joint 10th in their national championships! Congrats boys!

Koby Kalavannan in the U9 Section

George Ivanov nervous about his game

The second week saw some really exciting chess with again more new students having the coaching. Week two students consisted of:

• Imogen Turvey-Cross (U10)
• Akshaya Kalaiyalahan (U10)
• Elizabeth Ivanov (U10)
• George Ivanov (U10)
• Koby Kalavannan (U10)
• Francesco Bernardini (U10)
• Cosima Keen (U12)
• Louise Head (U14)
• Katherine Shepherd (U14)
• Kumar Dixit (U160 and U14)
• Charlie Keen (U120)
• Amy Hoare (Major Open)
• Adam C Taylor (Major Open)

 After an intense week of coaching, which saw me doing 12 hour days with hardly any breaks, these children were raring to go and it was only the coaches who were tired!

The second week was a great performance week for the Chevannes Chess Academy as we performed well in each section. The U10 section was a particularly good one for the girls as we had Imogen Turvey-Cross coming in joint 11th (as well as George Ivanov) unfortunately not defending her title.

Imogen Turvey Cross

Elizabeth Ivanov came joint 5th with an amazing performance including a notable scalp against Zheming Zhang, last year's British Champion. 

Elizabeth Ivanov

and Akshaya had an amazing performance regaining her title of British U10 Girls' Champion. But that's not it, oh no. Akshaya not only won the girls' title but she won the tournament outright with a total of 6/7 becoming the overall U10 British Champion and beating all the boys to the title! Congratulations - an absolutely fantastic result.

Akshaya Kalaiyalahan

 Cosima  Keen also did extremely well in the U12 section, winning the U12 British Girls' title, getting twice as many points as her nearest competitior and performing over 20 points higher than her grade.

In the U14 section, two of our students were battling it out for he U14 Girls Championships and so imagine our horror when they are paired against each other in the first round!! Luckily for us, the game ended in a draw and in fact they both went on to share the title, so congratulations to Louise Head and Katherine Shepherd!

Kumar Dixit's performance is something to be aware of as he came joint 4th, only losing to people graded 169 and above and performing over 40 points above his grade. He drew to England representative Ravi Haria and this boy has only been playing for about a year! Watch this space!

We are really pleased with how the coaching went and I know that the students really learnt a lot from GM Keith Arkell and IM Jovanka Houska. We are very impressed with Jovanka who, although was coaching the students for the Chevannes Chess Academy, still managed to play an impressive tournament in the Championship section and defended her title of English Ladies' and British Ladies' champion for another year running! 

From L to R: Cosima Keen, Jovanka Houska, Katherine Shephers, Akshaya Kalaiyalahan