National Under-14 Rapid Chess Tournament poised for Saturday

Jul 11, 2022 Sports

Kaieteur News – The Guyana Chess Federation (GCF) is set to host the Under 14 Nationals on Saturday, July 16 at Queen’s College.

Women’s Champion, Pooja Lam, (left) goes up against QC student, Maliha Rajkumar.

The National Under-14 Rapid Chess Tournament was last held in February 2020 at Mae’s School where Marian Academy’s, Ronan Lee, was victorious among a total of 75 students from 12 schools, but has since aged out of the division.

Players expected to be competing for the National Title include Kyle Couchman, Mayas Khan, Julian Mohabir, Nicholas and Alexander Zhang, Omar Shariff, Pooja Lam, Anaya Lall, Maliha and Mahir Rajkumar.

The young players will face off in seven rounds of matches from 9:00hrs to 16:30hrs.

The time control of the matches is 15 minutes with added 5-second increments. All Guyanese chess players who were under the age of 14 on January 1, 2022, are encouraged to take part.

Some of these youngsters have been competing against far more seasoned players for the earlier part of the year and while they sometimes excelled, this tournament provides them with an opportunity to compete against others in their age group.

Kyle Couchman and Matthew Singh recently battled at the Guyana National Stadium.

Anand Raghunauth, Vice President of the GCF said “Many of the young boys and girls look forward to the shorter version of chess. It’s a faster game. The younger players like to play quickly. It’s an exciting game, the entire tournament finishes in one day.

It’s a fun tournament even though it’s a serious competition. We have some young players who have just completed Grade Six exams, I’m sure they will be looking forward to returning to chess.

We have many of the seasoned players who have been competing over the past three to four months with the adults and with the older junior players, and they also will be looking forward to having a go at each other and I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting tournament.”

The Guyana Chess Federation had a large influx of new junior players earlier this year due to the extensive work done on the Chess in Schools programme. As a result, a large turnout is anticipated for this weekend’s matches.

Interested persons can register through the GCF’s website – guyanachess.org. Registration closes on July 15 at 17:00hrs. No late registration or in-person registration will be facilitated.

Trophies will be awarded for first, second and third places in both open and girls categories along with the best under-10 and under-8 in both at the end of seven matches.