It’s all good news
LET’S start with the Delancy UK Chess Challenge. This is a massive competition which attracted over 45,000 entrants from all over the country.
The juniors play, firstly, in local competitions then the winners progress to competitions covering wider areas. This year Manchester, Wright Robinson College hosted what is effectively the Northern semifinal but is called the Norhern Gigafinal. Winners go on to play in the National Final called the TerraFinal. This competition is the premier event both in attracting young children into chess events, and identifying stars of the future.
The Gigafinal (and the UK Chess Challenge as a whole) were fantastically organised by Sarah and Alex Longson, who took over running this, the world’s biggest junior tournament from founder IM Mike Basman in 2016. The tournaments were run on a very hot weekend, but the facilities, organisation, arbiting and general atmosphere were friendly and extremely good.
So all of the North East contingent did very well. The winners go on to the National Finals, anyone scoring 4pts or better can also go to a regional competition to be held in Liverpool and will be organised by our local leading trainer, Tim Wall.The players finishing 1st,2nd, and 3rd qualify for the TerraFinals to be held in Peterbrough in September.
I particularly want to draw attention to the outstanding performances of the players underlined above. The common factor, apart from natural talent, is that they all play for chess clubs in what are effectively adult leagues. This has exposed them to much stronger opposition and accelerated their chess development.
Yichen Han continues to impress. Having won the U11 competition at the British Championships last year he has repeated his success again this year. He went into the tournament as second favourite to a precious talent from France but but beat him and all his other opponents to retain his title. He also played in the European Junior Championships in Poland, where he finished equal first on points but second on tie break.
James Moreby recently finished first equal in the Zollner cup but lost a play off. Another very strong junior with lots of positive league experience. He still has two more years to beat the late Frank Moons’ record as the youngest winner.
As previously reported Tim Wall and Mike Smith, representing the Northumbria League, have set up two Library based,social chess clubs. One in Gateshead Central Library on Tueday evening from 5pm to 6-45pm, the other in Newcastle Central Library on Saturdays from 12 noon to 2pm.