CSC at The London Chess Classic 2010

Chess in Schools and Communities really kicked off in September 2010 and is now working in 8 areas: Hackney, Barnet, Newham, Hammersmith & Fulham (all in London) and Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, and Middlesbrough. We are in over 60 schools and are teaching over 2000 children. The weekly teaching of the specially devised CSC curriculum has been a great success, so we thought we would run a tournament!

The tournament took place during The 2^nd London Chess Classic at Olympia Conference Centre in Kensington on Thursday 9^th December. 300 children signed up for the event so we were not short of numbers! We had planned to have a simultaneous display before the event with some masters, but when this volume of children signed up, it turned into 9 simultaneous displays!! I was so lucky to have so many masters available. 

GM Chris Ward has a think in his simul against 30 children

The preparation for the tournament was no trivial matter. We had allocated ourselves 30 minutes for each round. This was to include: doing the pairings for 300 children, seating 300 children in the correct places, allowing 150 games to finish being played, collecting the results of all 150 games and getting them all ready for the next round! When trying to work out the logistics of this, we realised that it was necessary to use a computer to do all the pairings, so I manually put all 300 children’s names, schools and age groups into my computer, only for it to crash at 3am, leaving me in a complete state of panic. I spent the entire night fretting and trying to get it back working again. 

So after approximately 30 minutes sleep, I arrive at Olympia Conference centre to set up and borrow another computer to manually input all the names in. Two hours later, things are starting to look up, until, yep you guessed it, the second computer crashed! I felt jinxed – this was surely an omen. After a good 15 minutes of having a good cry and stressing out, I finally admitted that it was time to revert back to old-school playing cards! It was going to be tough, but we were up for the challenge.

Whilst all this was going on, we had children from all over the country rattling their brains to find the moves to outwit our masters. The East Hall of Olympia was lined with children from 5-11 years old who were bursting with enthusiasm to gain a worthy scalp. As the children finished their games, one by one, they were truly gutted to have not been victorious over our country’s best players. 

GM Daniel King puts in maximum effort against Ravenscroft Primary School

Having warmed up against the titled players, the children were ready to play some true competitors! The tournament was split into 3 sections of roughly equal numbers: Years 2-4, Year 5 and Year 6. Each school had entered a number of children who were competing as a team and representing their school. The top 4 scores in each team counted to the team’s score, so it did not matter how many children each school brought along to the event. However, there were some complications when schools entered a couple of people in each age group! Children’s scores from the lower age groups would count towards the higher age groups’ teams. It was clear in our heads!

A school prepares for their games

For a lot of the children, it was their first tournament and they were just excited at the prospect of playing chess against children from other schools. For others, this was another chance at a piece of silverware for their cabinet so range of experience in the hall was extremely vast. Despite this, the ambience was so positive and every child in the room was having the most amazing time. Regardless of the result, there would be a huge smile on the face of each child leaving the tournament hall, eager to come back in for the next round. 

Post-game analysis on the giant chess set.

Six games were played each and the children battled to the end, especially when the prizes were revealed and displayed in the hall. The incentive to win was even bigger! As the long day drew to a close, everyone gathered in the foyer for the prizegiving. It was no ordinary prizegiving as we had a celebrity to present the prizes. We were extremely lucky to be graced with the presence of Alex Zane, Channel 4 TV presenter, comedian and XFM DJ. He was wonderful with the children and it was amazing for him to take the time out to do this for us.

Tournament Director IM Malcolm Pein and celebrity Alex Zane look on at the children's games with interest

In general the day was a great success, everyone leaving with a prize and having a lovely time. To top it off, they followed it up by watching the World Champion play chess live!

The children await for prizegiving

The main prizes were as follows:

Top School

Year 6: Twickenham Prep
Year 5: Twickenham Prep
Year 4: Sir Thomas Abney
Year 3: Wetherby
Year 2: Mulberry House

2^nd Placed School

Year 6: St. Bede’s
Year 5: William Patten
Year 4: Barnet Knights
Year 3: Coldfall
Year 2: Jubilee

3^rd Placed School

Year 6: William Patten
Year 5: Barham
Year 4: Kempshott
Year 3: Ravenscroft
Year 2: The Hartley Centre

Individual Winners

Year 6: Ria Rambhiya – Barham Primary School
Year 5: Kishen Singh and Ross Milverton – Twickenham Prep,  Jagdeep Dhemrait – Barham Primary School, Matteo Walls – William Patten School
Year 4: Filip Kurzynkski – Sir Thomas Abney School
Year 3: Eric Eedle – Coldfall School, Bhav Rhambhiya – Barham Primary School
Year 2: Theo Krais – Mulberry House Primary School

Alex Zane presents to Year 3 winners - Wetherby School

 

I would like to thank all the amazing helpers that I had for this tournament as I couldn’t have done it without them. I would also like to thank Malcolm Pein, Daniel King, Chris Ward, John-Paul Wallace, Rajko Vujatovic, Rob Willmoth, James Coleman, Steve James, Rosalind Kieran and Shelby Lohrman for all giving amazing simultaneous displays and remaining unbeaten!

Thank you to Ray Morris-Hill for taking the brilliant photos.

CSC will be back with more tournaments, so watch this space!