Braunstone Chess Club Juniors

27th June: The Braunstone Junior Championship is now completed. Congratulations to the winner: Qiyuan Chen and to Matthew Lo in second place and Matthew Gamble in Third Place. All the games have been submitted for ECF grading so that all who took part will have played enough games to get an ECF grade in August, and here are the final results and standings

18th May: On Saturday 17th May, six of Braunstone juniors travelled down to Northampton to take part in the UK Chess Challenge MEGA Final. The UK Chess Challenge is the biggest chess competition in the world. The MEGA Final is for all of the Juniors who are the best in their school to compete against other children across Leicestershire and Northampton. Leicestershire were very well represented this year thanks to the work of Paul Findley and Alan Jex amongst others. A result of 4 or more out of 6 would be sufficient to qualify for the next stage, the GIGA Final where all of the best county juniors compete against players from the whole of the north of England, Wales Northern Ireland and Scotland. The south of England have their own section.
Of the six Braunstone players, four qualified for the GIGA Final: Conor Reid who won the U18 section with 5.5 out of 6, Matthew Lo who won the u9 section with 6, Holly Jacobson who was also top girl in the u11 section with 4 points, and Matthew Gamble who got 4 points in the u9 section. Just missing out with 3.5 points was Peter Barlev playing in the u18 section and Phoenix Colburn with 3 points in the U9 section.

Conor Reid WWWWWD = Supremo
Peter Barlev WWDWLL = 3.5 points
Holly Jacobson LWWLWW = Qualified & Suprema
Matthew Lo WWWWWW = Supremo
Matthew Gamble WWWWLL = Qualified
Phoenix Colburn WLDWLD = 3 points

The Rockingham Megafinal players results are posted on the organisers website via the link here (click on the Rockingham tab for Leicestershire results) Well done to everyone who played as everyone bar Matthew Lo was playing at the MEGA Finals for the first time. Fantastic effort by all of the Braunstone players. Report by Paul Colburn - there is also a full report on the lrca website.

18th May: The first two rounds of the Summer Junior Tournament were completed on Tuesday and here are the results:

10th May: Congratulations to the Braunstone Bears for winning the Minor League after a victory against Loughborough on Tuesday night.

Table & Results are on the following link: http://lrca.stewartsplace.org.uk/minor_league.html

Well done to everyone who took part in the first season of the Minor League. We hope that you enjoyed the competition. Below are all of the Braunstone players and their performance.

Report by Paul Colburn

14th February: Congratulations to everyone who played in the exciting match against Ashby on Tuesday. We secured a narrow 4-3 victory against their juniors. The match was a great testimony to both sides and showed that they too have some talented juniors. My personal thanks to Holly for being the captain on the night. We will no doubt face their juniors again as hopefully they will enter the minor league next season.

24th January: The new minor league has started with four teams entered - Red Admiral, Loughborough, Braunstone Bears and Braunstone Butterflies. After the first round of matches the table looks like this:

	Played	Won	Drawn	Lost	Pts
Braunstone Bears	2	2	0	0	4
Red Admiral	2	1	0	1	2
Loughborough	2	1	0	1	2
Braunstone Butterflies	2	0	0	2	0

The fixture list can be found here

On Saturday 16th November three Braunstone juniors (Connor Serdeczny, Matthew Lo & Phoenix Colburn) travelled down to play in the 34th Northampton Junior Chess Congress. The event is a qualifier for the London Junior Chess Congress in December and so attracted some very strong juniors. To qualify you need to get 4 points from 6 matches in the u8 or 3½ in the older sections.

Connor was playing in the u12 section and he unfortunately managed to get stalemate twice in the first two rounds. He finally got a victory though in round 5 which he was very happy about and finished on 2 points. It was a particularly impressive result for Connor as he was playing a year above his age - so hopefully next year he can do better.

Phoenix playing in the u8 section won his first two rounds, then he lost his next two games one of which was to last season's U8 winner. He had a good win in round five to set up an opportunity to qualify for LJCC by winning his last round which was his desire. Unfortunately he blundered a queen in a winning position and lost, and all my pacing up and down outside the room didn't help!

Matthew Lo playing in the u10 section despite only being 8 years old, managed to win 5 out of 6 games only losing to the eventual winner and finished joint second and as the U9 champion this truely was an impressive performance that goes with his U8 Leicestershire title and his TeraFinal appearance. One to watch for the future! Congratulations to all the players.

Link to the winners' pictures here: http://www.northantsjuniorchess.org/34th-junior-congress.html

Thanks to Paul Colburn for this report.

We played the first match in the George Winterton Minor League when our Braunstone Bears took on our Braunstone Butterflies. Congratulations to the Bears (Qiyuan, William & Matthew) on a 6-0 victory over the Butterflies (Edyta, Weronika & Peter). Despite the scoreline the matches were very close and both teams can be very proud of their performances. The Butterflies were outgraded on every board but put up a very good fight particularly Edyta in the first game. Particularly impressive though was Matthew's beautiful checkmate against Peter in the second game with two bishops both defending by two knights trapping the king in mate. The other teams in the league are Kirby and Loughborough - full fixture list to follow.

Recently 3 of the juniors from the chess classes Peter, Phoenix & Conor travelled to Ashby to take on their juniors. Ashby had a very nice set up and had lots of their league players on hand to help and free chocolates! Because only 3 players were available from Braunstone they each played three matches to give Ashby Juniors a match each. All of the matches were close encounters but unfortunately we lost overall 4-5

The Individual performances were as follows:

	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Score
Peter	1	0	1	2 out of 3
Phoenix	0	0	1	1out of 3
Conor	½	½	0	1 out of 3

We look forward to welcoming back Ashby to our club later in the year when hopefully we will have more juniors available and can seek revenge.

The chess classes are now in full swing with four volunteers needed for each class. The latest schedule for January to April 2014 has been drawn up, please see here when it's your turn!