Four players share top spot
Kosala Amaratunge of JMC International School, Kalutara won the championship after three others, Senuka Ahangama of D.S. Senanayake College, Bridjesh Saravanabhavan of Gateway International School and S.M.M.P. Kulathilake of Sangabodhi Vidyalaya, Nittambuwa, shared the highest points of 7½ out of 8 games. All four players were unbeaten where they just gave one draw to their opponents and received a forfeit point where Kosala had the better tie-breaker.
Senuka won the silver medal while Brijeash secured the bronze medal on their tie break performances. Kulathilake had to satisfy with the fourth position.
The CFSL Online Under16 Open Youth Rapid Chess Championship 2021 was conducted by the Chess Federation of Sri Lanka (CFSL) successfully on May 1 and 2 via the Chess.com platform. A total of 137 players from all over the country registered for the event, which was conducted for eight rounds with the time control of 15 minutes with a 10-second increment per each move played.
Players were logged in to www.chess.com/live, and played on laptops. Players were instructed to register their real name in their chess.com profile and upload their real photographs.
The event was conducted with the highest precautions for anti-cheating regulations. Mobile phones or other equipment were not allowed during the games. Only the player was allowed in the playing room. The player’s webcam, speaker, and microphone worked at all times. Also, players shared their screens with the organisers with task bar. All other programmes except the chess. com and the zoom were closed while the games were in progress.
Players were not allowed to make noise and to avoid background noise while all games were closely monitored. Engines were used for analysis purpose and randomly games were analysed by www.chess.com and the World Chess representative, Prof. Regan.