Today marks the second and final day of the National Schools Chess Championship, where schools from some of the regions are given the opportunity to oppose each other in the wonderful game called chess.
Last year’s winner was St Stanislaus College, and they have started as favourites once again. The Motilall brothers, Ron and Raan, have shown tremendous improvement over the past year, and Ron is now the national junior champion. Cecil Cox from Queen’s College is just as strong and cunning at the chess board and his game with Ron could go either way.
Last year Linden, Berbice, West Demerara and Bartica brought some strong players to the tournament and it would be interesting to see how they fare against their better-known opponents. We had just over one hundred participants last year and we are anticipating a higher turn-out this time around.
The quality of the games and standard of play will be scrutinised by the senior players, to make an assessment of how much we have improved over the past year.
We trust that Taffin would look at the games carefully and bring the ones of consequence to the attention of the Federation. Then we would be in a better position to know who has promise, and what to do to improve that player’s game.
The Ministry of Culture Youth and Sport has put half a million dollars into the tournament to make it a reality, such is the importance of chess in schools. A greater challenge lies before us for next year’s competition. Dr Frank Anthony has challenged the Federation to have one hundred schools participating in the 2011 tournament.
Certainly we have to move outside of Georgetown and the traditional areas if we are to make this challenge a reality.
In the meantime, we hope to find a few more ‘Taffin Khans’ in the schools and move the best that we can find into the regional schools’ competitions. There is a bright future for our youths in chess, and great glory to be experienced over the chess board.
