Chess regional Megafinals report
17th June 2016
Some of the Gateway School chess team took part in the regional Megafinals this weekend. This year saw some new faces in our U7 and U9 competition, sisters Felicity and Daisy B, along with veterans and already established Bucks county players from Gateway, Simon E, Keiran M and Will R.
All Gateway children started well with tough competitive and unknown opponents in the opening rounds, as is the way the Swiss System works. The third round and thereafter are children on equal ability are paired based on their previous three games. By the time of the 6th and final round, every Gateway child still had some chance of getting through to the Gigafinal or winning the much coveted Suprema/Supremo award given to the top player in his or her age group in Buckinghamshire.
It's worth mentioning that it's a tall order for anyone to play 6 rounds of tournament chess in one day. Our recent Camber Sands competition, also six rounds, was spread out over two days. By the end of the day, it's fair to say that all children and parents were quite exhausted. However, there were some fantastic final games and this year the newcomers prevailed with both Daisy and Felicity winning Suprema awards for Under 7 and Under 9 girl competitions. Oddly enough this feat happened a few years ago.. and they were also sisters. It would seem lightning does strike twice every so often.
Keiran did very well only losing to 2 top players who are both trying to get into the England team at Under 10 level. He managed to qualify for the Gigafinals along with Suprema Felicity, both with four wins from six. Simon and Will fought till the bitter end and narrowly missed out with 3 wins in a very tough Under 11 group. Daisy has a bright chess future, as does her sister, and this was obvious right from the start with every one of her games lasting longer than 30 minutes, probably a record for any Megafinalist. Every game Daisy played she was winning, taking into account that most of her opponents were two years her senior, all with a puzzled expression as they lost piece after piece. Daisy was playing the game at her pace and no-one was going to change that. The result of this was that she only lost 1 game all day. A great day for Gateway Chess and the icing on the cake regarding our chess club's achievements this school year. Onwards and upwards...