Robinson Cup Win

Daniil Zelenchuk continued his fine recent form by scoring 4/5 in the recent Robinson Cup. This fantastic effort helped the Irish team win the competition.

UCU Chess Summer School

Once again Mark Newman of the Ulster Chess Union staged a fantastic Summer Chess School! 3 days of puzzles, games, lectures and battle chess ensured that all the 12 young players came away with enhanced chess skills learnt in a fun and friendly environment. A full report and photos can be found on the UCU website. Hats off to Mark for his continued hard work in helping promote and develop children's chess locally.

Delancey Northern Giga Finals

Once again Wright Robinson College in Manchester was the host of the Delancey UK Schools Chess Challenge Northern Giga Final. The atmosphere in the venue was an incredible mixture of high tension and over excitement with approximately 1000 enthusiastic children (and their parents!) all chomping at the bit to start their games and earn a place in the much coveted Tera Finals in London.

12 of Northern Ireland's finest young chess players made the journey across to Manchester to test themselves against the top juniors in the UK. To attend the Giga Finals you must win a local qualifying tournament, so just reaching this stage is quite an achievement. All the players acquitted themselves very well against incredibly tough opposition - as an example there was a player rated over 2000 in the U9 boys section! Special mention must go to Daniil Zelenchuk (U14's) and Maxim Dobrynin (U11 boy's) who both scored a fantastic 4/6.

NAME	SECTION	SCORE
Adam Rushe	U16	3
Ciaran Rowan	U16	2
Daniil Zelenchuk	U14	4
Aditya Shah	U14	1.5
Calum Glendinning	U12 Boys	3
Maxim Dobrynin	U11 Boys	4
Rahul Shah	U10 Boys	2
Anjali Singh	U9 Girls	3
Dexter Harris	U9 Boys	3
Adam Fitzsimons	U8 Boys	3
Aaditya Singh	U7 Boys	3

Congratulations to all our local juniors who attended and many thanks to all at the Giga Finals for staging such a fantastic event!

End of Year Chess Awards

Once again the end of year children's chess awards were held at Parliament Buildings, Stormont. The day involves a mini tournament, tour of Stormont, and finally the prize giving. Many thanks to Mark Newman for organising the fantastic event and for all his efforts throughout the year in running the UCU children's chess events. The photo below shows all the winners.

Selection for Ireland

Huge congratulations to Jonathon Peoples and Daniil Zelenchuk who were both selected to represent Ireland in the upcoming Glorney Gilbert International.The event takes place in Wales from 23rd - 27th July. The Glorney Gilbert International is a team event that has been running continuously since 1949 in various formats. It currently consists of 5 teams (France, England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland) competing in 4 competitions -

Glorney Cup               -              U18's

Gilbert Cup                 -              Girls U18's

Robinson Cup             -              U14's

Stokes Cup                  -              U12's

We wish both players and all the Irish teams the best of luck!

Saint Petersburg Sponsorship

On 18th August 2017 a group of 13 players from Northern Ireland are travelling to Russia to play in a challenge match against Saint Petersburg. Four of these players are U18 - Daniil Zelenchuk (14), Edward Doak (17), Dexter Harris (8) and Adam Fitzpatrick (8). A series of successful fundraisers by Brendan Jamison raised £600 to help cover the travel costs for these children. Some additional private donations were also received and a very generous £150 business sponsorship from Language Training Solutions which went towards the visas for the children. 

Director of CHESS NI Brendan Jamison states that "we offer our sincere thanks to Daniel Roberts and Joanne Ritchie from Language Training Solutions who share our passion for the educational merits of a cross-cultural chess match in Saint Petersburg, interweaving the role of play and creativity with learning new language skills and improving communication techniques. When chess players from around the world move to Northern Ireland and have little grasp of the English language, many begin their integration process by joining our local chess community. We get extremely excited by players from overseas who join us at Belfast tournaments as they greatly enrich the cultural life of the city. In recent years, we have welcomed players from China, India, Egypt, Russia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and The Phillipines. Hopefully this trend will continue and expand over the next decade as Belfast enjoys a rebirth as a vibrant cosmopolitan city."

Judit Polgar Talk

On Thursday 25th May the Irish Chess Union has organised a talk with one of the world's leading female chess players, Judit Polgar. It is being held in University College Dublin and commences at 6.00pm. Online tickets are 5 euro with all proceeds going to charity. If you are interested in attending this fantastic event tickets can be purchased through the ICU website, however, you may need to hurry as numbers are limited!

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Judit is the only woman to qualify for a World Championship tournament, having done so in 2005. She is the first, and to date, only woman to have surpassed the 2700 Elo rating barrier, reaching a career peak rating of 2735 and peak world ranking of No. 8, both achieved in 2005. She was the number 1 rated woman in the world from January 1989 up until the March 2015 rating list