Dorset Junior Chess shine against Hampshire, Devon and Berkshire, coming third in second Inter-county junior chess tournament.
The second Inter-county junior chess team battle took place on Saturday 17th July during a weekend of much chess activity across the whole country and the Dorset junior Chess team certainly did itself proud.
With a somewhat depleted team due to the Delancey UK Chess Challenge Gigafinals taking place over the same weekend and a few other players not available, the team improved upon it’s performance in the first inter-county battle, coming third overall.
With a team of just eight players, every score counted and, indeed, every player on the team contributed to the team total of 134 points. A fantastic team effort; well done to everyone!
Off to a great start!
The Dorset Junior Chess team got off to a great start and, at around a third of the way into the 2 hour tournament, the team was lying in second place in a tight battle with Devon junior chess.
The Dorset team continued to battle with Devon for much of the match, largely maintaining second place.
At around the half way mark, Dorset was in again in second place, leading both Devon and Berkshire and advancing on Hampshire.
At this point in time, Dorset Juniors were dominating the leader board with 5 players in the top 10 (in 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 10th places). While other counties had individually high scoring players, Dorset juniors were scoring consistently across the team.
Unfortunately, Hampshire had two ‘big hitting’ players, one of which went on to notch up a tally of 67 points, over a quarter on Hampshire’s total single handed.
Highest average performance
Overall, Dorset had the highest average performance across all four county teams and the second highest average score per player, only bettered by Hampshire (which reflected their one extremely high scoring player). Extremely well done indeed!
Top scorer for Dorset Juniors was again Jamie Doyle with an excellent score of 28 points from just 11 games. Jamie played the second highest scoring player, from Hampshire, twice, losing the first game but was victorious on the second encounter, after which his opponent, who up to then had been unbeaten, withdrew from the tournament.
Several players performed above their current rating, most notably Jack, Finn and Lohit; the latter recording a performance rating nearly 200 rating points higher than his actual rating. Himali was another player who performed well above her rating of 1121 with a performance rating of 1362.
Plus Jamie, Jack and Florence all had improved performance ratings when compared to the 1st inter-county team battle back at the beginning of May.
Max could be forgiven for feeling slightly tired; he had played in the U8 Gigafinal in the morning with only a short break in between. Harry and Himali played fewer games but collectively contributed 11 valuable points to the total score.
Many thanks to all the Dorset junior chess players who took part in the team battle, some at the last minute. Your support for, and involvement in, Dorset Junior Chess is much appreciated.
The inter-county junior team battles will take a break over the summer holidays but we hope to resume in the Autumn term, perhaps even in a face to face contest someday.
