Ricardo Narine won Saturday’s Guyana Chess Federation mandated playoff against Ethan Lee to become the new national junior chess champion.
The two were declared joint winners of the GCF/GAICO- sponsored nine-round championship battle after ending on six and one half points each.
This set the stage for Saturday’s three-game showdown where the first game was over 15 minutes, the second, 10 minutes and the third of five minutes duration.
Lee won the first game but subsequently lost the next two.
“I feel that my performance overall was good.” said Narine after the match. However, in the first game (15-minute rapid), I felt that I made a few inaccuracies which Ethan capitalised on,” said Narine who played with the white pieces.
Narine credited his opening preparation for his second game win.
“In the second game, I felt that the opening surprised Ethan which assisted me in gaining a winning position,” said Narine who played with the black pieces.
“In the final game, I corrected the inaccuracies made in the first match and came through with the win.
Narine said the time control helped him somewhat.
“The time controls really helped with the overall outcome of the playoffs. Ethan put up an excellent fight, making it all the more satisfying,” he said. According to Narine, winning the national junior chess title has long been one of his goals but the win seemed a long way off when he lost a couple of matches in the nine round Swiss system final.
“After my losses against Keron (Sandiford) and Kyle (Couchman), I thought that I was in for a rough tournament – but I pulled it together at the end and managed to come back. However, after the first playoff game I felt really nervous about losing 2-0. But I pulled it together in the end and managed to reverse sweep.”
Lee has been playing chess for over a decade and is a former Marian Academy student who is currently enrolled with the GOAL scholarship programme pursuing a degree in Industrial Engineering.
while Ricardo Narine has been in the sport for approximately seven years, and neither of them held a national title prior to this year.
Narine is a former Queen’s College student who now attends the University of Guyana pursuing a degree in Computer Science.
It was a tense back-and-forth over the board at the decisive play-off event with neither player ready to concede the title without a fight.
By random selection, 17-year-old Narine was placed on the white pieces against 19-year-old Lee on black in a 15-minute rapid match.
Lee is well-known to dominate longer formats of the game and demonstrated this by winning the match against Narine.
The play-off format consisted of 3 games, a 15 minute game, a 10 minute game and a 5 minute game,
where two best of three decided the champion. This method has been consistently implemented in the
past to determine the National Champion for both Senior and Junior titles. The play-off was supervised
by Irshad Mohamad, FIDE Arbiter, Tour Director and past President of the Guyana Chess Federation.
