The best invited for National Champs

The best invited for National Champs
Published: Friday | March 23, 2012
Volume 1. No. 17

It is a hot year for chess all over the world as most countries are in the throes of selecting national representatives for the Chess Olympiad in Istanbul, Turkey, this summer. Jamaica is no different.

The top 24 players in the island and the top eight female players have been invited by the Jamaica Chess Federation (JCF) to play in the 44th annual National Championship from which final selections on who will be on the Olympiad squads will be finalised.

The JCF has already done a preliminary selection of the Olympic squads for the open and women’s sections who must among four criteria, play in the National Tournament and place in the top 10 for the Open or top six for the women to make the final cut for the team to represent Jamaica.

The 24 players invited to participate in the National Champion-ships Open are: National Cham-pion 2011, National Master (NM) Damion Davy, National Junior Champion 2011, Miguel Asher, National Junior Champion 2012 Stuart James, Fide Candidate Master (FCM) Mark Holness, FCM Duane Rowe, NM Malaku Lorne, NM Andrew Mellace, Women’s Fide Master (WFM) Deborah Richards, International Master (IM) Jomo Pitterson, Fide Master (FM) Warren Elliot, FM Shane Matthews, NM Peter Myers, NM Mikhail Solomon, Ian Wilkinson, Amari James, Mark Henry, Paul Brooks, Zachary Ramsay, Kenroy Smith, Sheyras Smith, Andrew Soares, Peter Thomas, Walter Williams and Markland Douglas.

Invited to play in the National Championships Women are: Ariel Barrett, Alethia Edwards, National Junior Champion girls 2012 Krishna Gray, Zhu Hui, Rachel Miller, Annesha Smith, Melisha Smith and Kadian McGlashan.

Note that WFM Richards has been invited to play in the National Open Championships, and JCF selection committee representative Robert Wheeler explained that by virtue of this invitation she is an automatic selection for the women’s Olympiad team if she were not to qualify for the Open team.

The deadline for registration in this tournament is today and play will start on April 13 and continue to April 19.

More here.