First Academy session of season

The first session for Shropshire Junior Chess Academy takes place this Saturday (3 Oct) at Trinity School, Ford, near Shrewsbury from 10am to 12pm.

The Academy started last season and has already seen its first candidates successfully reach accreditation for the Pawn and Knight levels. The events are a mix of coaching, fun games and competitions.

The Academy is open to under 18s chess players in the county of all abilities. Just turn up on Saturday and get involved.

After the Academy this Saturday there will be the first match for the county junior team against Warwickshire starting at 1.30pm. This season the juniors are taking part in the Under 140 grade section of the Midlands Chess Association competition.

Shropshire Under 18s take on the UK's best

Shropshire juniors took on top teams from around the country in the National Youth Chess Association under 18 event held at Abraham Darby School, Telford on Saturday (26 September).

Although the eight-board team were heavily outgraded in all their four matches, there were some very good individual performances including Nathanael Paul on board 3 (2.5/4); Francis Rooney on board 5 (2/4) and Mark Richards on board 7 (2/4). There was also an under 14 event held on the same day in which Shropshire junior Athar Mehmood played with the Staffordshire team on top board, scoring 3/4 and winning a board prize.

Shropshire U18 team and club: 1. Craig Whitfield (Staffs) 2. Ieuan Fenton (Oswestry) 3. Nathanael Paul (Coddon) 4. Peter Mellor (Coddon) 5. Francis Rooney (Shrewsbury/Church Stretton) 6. Chris Lovejoy (Shrewsbury) 7. Mark Richards (Newport) 8. Matthew Best (Shrewsbury)

Revised league fixtures

There have been some changes to the earlier published fixture list. The Calendar of dates on the left has now been updated to show the new fixtures for Shrewsbury and Newport Juniors this season which kicks off next month.

Official 2009 grades

Shropshire Junior grades 2009

Following some further amendments by ECF in late August these are now the official grades for the 2009-10 season.

Ieuan Fenton (Oswestry) 175
Louis Graham 166
Athar Mehmood (Newport) 133
Nathanael Paul (Coddon) 131
Peter Mellor (Coddon) 125
Francis Rooney (Shrewsbury/Church Stretton) 110
Christopher Lovejoy (Shrewsbury/Church Stretton) 104
Huw Davenport (Newport) 99
Mark Richards (Newport) 98
Jamie Allan (Newport) 97
Matthew Best (Shrewsbury) 95
Henry Graham (Shrewsbury) 90
Jonathan Newey (Shrewsbury) 91
Luke West (Newport) 80
Angelica Dean (Shrewsbury) 72
Joseph Mellor (Coddon) 64
Matthew Mellor (Coddon) 56
Katherine Lovejoy (Shrewsbury) 50

Full list of Shropshire grades here - http://rutterchess.741.com/Grades_2009.htm

New grades online

The 2009 grades are now online at http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/

Quite a few have topped the 100-mark and there are large increases for some of our juniors as anticipated.(Remember that these grades also represent a major revision which has seen a lot of junior grades lifted.)

I'll put the full list of grades on here shortly.

HOWEVER, be warned that there could still be revisions to this list before it becomes official for the coming season. I don't see any Shropshire grades that I would consider out of order but there are some incidences across the country of significantly "overgraded" juniors that may mean there is further tinkering with the system of allocating these grades.

Shropshire juniors reach final stage of UK Chess Challenge

Two Shropshire Juniors have reached the final stage of the UK Chess Challenge with a place in the Challengers Tournament at the Terrafinal to be held next month in Warwick. Alex Taylor (Adams Grammar and Newport Chess Club) came equal third in the U18 Gigafinal last weekend with 4 points from 6 matches; and Athar Mehmood (Wrekin College and Newport Chess Club) came equal second in the U12 section with 5/6, only narrowly missing out on the top spot and qualification for the Terrafinal. This is a very impressive result for both players as these Gigafinal sections are very tough at the top with a number of junior internationals present!

In total, 12 Shropshire juniors took part in the Gigafinal in Manchester which was the Northern final of the competition which involves around 70,000 young chess players in its opening stages!

All of the Shropshire players performed well against tough opposition. The full results with club/school in brackets:

U7B Greg Jones (Shrewsbury) 2.5/6
U11B Joe Booth (St Georges Sch, Shrewsbury) 2/6
U12B Athar Mehmood (Newport) 5/6 - equal 2nd
U13B Matthew Best (Shrewsbury) 2/6
U13B Mark Richards (Newport) 4/6
U13G Angelica Dean (Shrewsbury) 3/6
U14B Francis Rooney (Shrewsbury) 3/6
U15B Peter Mellor (Coddon) 2.5/6
U16B Jamie Allan (Newport) 2.5/6
U16B Sam Eardley (Adams Grammar) 2/6
U17B Nathanael Paul (Coddon) 2.5/6
U18B Alex Taylor (Newport) 4/6 - equal 3rd

Shropshire chess AGM

The report submitted to the Shropshire Chess AGM summarising the highlights of the past season is available to download. Download AGM report