English Chess Forum

Congratulations indeed to Akshaya. I'm impressed that not only did she do so well in the Championship to jointly gain the Women's title, but that she also played in the U12 in the morning each day, winning with 6.5/7. Obviously the U12 games were a lot easier for her, but they were not all complete walkovers. To manage both demonstrates an amazing level of focus and stamina.

Andrew Varney wrote:Congratulations indeed to Akshaya. I'm impressed that not only did she do so well in the Championship to jointly gain the Women's title, but that she also played in the U12 in the morning each day, winning with 6.5/7. Obviously the U12 games were a lot easier for her, but they were not all complete walkovers. To manage both demonstrates an amazing level of focus and stamina.

It was very impressive. I kind of wish more of the juniors had been playing in just the junior or championship events and not the events I was playing in as well... To add to the "grovelling a draw" story mentioned above, I first remember seeing Akshaya play in a Thames Valley League match back in January. She was playing on board 7 for Ealing A against the Richmond B team, playing a 163 on board 7. As captain of that B-team, I wasn't sure if my player would have an easy game or not. It was the first game to finish (a "cautious draw" according to reports) and they analysed the game for quite some time.

The best moment in terms of playing juniors, though, was when I was playing in the British Pairs Blitz Championships on the Tuesday evening, and I and a visiting clubmate from Richmond (the club, not the area) were paired against two brothers playing in (I think) the U10 or U9 tournaments. My playing partner made a comment about how the juniors used to be a quarter his age, but are now a fifth his age! We did manage to win the game, just!

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:We did manage to win the game, just!

My memories of that tournament are that it took the Richmond Pairs team longer to report the result at the conclusion of their game than it did to actually play the game.

Alex Holowczak wrote:

Christopher Kreuzer wrote:We did manage to win the game, just!

My memories of that tournament are that it took the Richmond Pairs team longer to report the result at the conclusion of their game than it did to actually play the game.

We were so used to losing, we forgot that we needed to report results when winning...

Will the results of the tournament be published at some stage? I did pass on copies of the two photos I took, and the person I gave them to (possibly the bulletin editor) wanted the names of the people in the photos, and I said you would know.

The finals were Steven Jones and I vs Andrew Horton and Paul Talbot. 3rd place playoff was Akito Oyama and Adam C Taylor vs Jamie Horton and Phil Olbison.