Due to Christmas Day and New Year’s Day being Fridays, the latest Dorset junior chess evening was run on Wednesday 30th December and, despite the festive season and pending transit into Tier 4 for many, a record number of 16 juniors attended. The session was another highly enjoyable online chess coaching and tournament for the Dorset junior chess players.
The evening started at the usual 5pm slot with two Christmas tree puzzles set by Martin, the second of which proved to be rather tricky but it was good to see that the juniors had some excellent ideas as to where the pieces should move.
This week’s session included a Chesskid.com video on span style=”color: red;”>Your Opponent, making the critical point that it’s very important is to think about what your opponent could be planning to do or you might get caught out! The video was paused by Andy at critical points to enable the juniors in the session to solve the problems posed by Fun Master Mike. It’s always an eager race between the juniors to give the answer.
This was followed by a very close and exciting online 5 round blitz chess tournament on Chesskid.com which was won by Max, with Harry coming second and Lohit third, closely followed by Matthew in fourth and Florence & Rafael in equal fifth. It is great to see all juniors developing their chess and enjoying themselves. Well played all juniors!
In the final round, a critical game ended in an interesting and exciting draw when black ran out of time but white couldn’t be awarded the win due to lack of mating material, having only a king. Here is the final position.
The next session will be on Friday 8th January 2021.
Happy New Year to all!
These evenings are proving to be very popular. If you know of any juniors who would be interested then please contact [email protected]. We welcome all junior chess players from across the Dorset and Bournemouth & District chess league catchment areas (and some who are just over the border in Hampshire!) irrespective of your school or chess club affiliation.
