Following the recent success of the Dorset Junior Chess team in the Inter-County team battle, Southbourne Chess Club simultaneously hosted two Dorset junior chess tournaments on Friday 11th February which attracted 22 juniors.
The juniors were divided into a Top section, catering for the more experienced juniors, and a Rookies section for the beginners/improvers, so giving every junior a chance to have some good competitive games.
With a time control of 5 minutes per player, there was lots of buzz and exciting chess.
In the more experienced Top section 4 strong juniors from Poole and 1 junior, Jack Baskett, from Ringwood were invited, along with the 3 Southbourne Bacchus League players of Finn Schell, Florence Spirling and Ollie Welch.
Zander Booth (Poole) took the top honours with a score of 6.5 points out of 7, followed by Finn Schell (Southbourne) and Leo Camopy (Poole) who both did extremely well to come equal 2nd with 4.5 points, followed by Max Teverson and Harry Mercer (Poole) on 3.5 points, each clocking up 3 draws piece, and Florence Spirling (Southbourne) on 3 points.
In the Rookies section with 12 players, four Southbourne juniors, Ed, Cyrus, Maxi and Smyan all came equal 1st with 5 points out of 6. Close behind them on three points were Ben and Owen. For some of the Rookies, this was the first time they had played with a clock. This proved to be an exciting challenge at times and there was some very enthusiastic time keeping, along with a few losses on time.
The evening included free refreshments with plenty of biscuits being eaten! And there was even a birthday cake as one of the juniors was celebrating his 9th birthday.
Everyone won a prize including leftover Christmas selection packs and early Easter eggs as well as chess scorebooks and pens!
