Thanks to Scott for the following report. The winning team features Wellington Chess Club's new young star on board 1, Karthik Konakanchi
Wellington
Region
Primary
Interschool
Championship 2013
By Scott Wastney
Eleven schools competed this year for the title of Wellington Primary School’s
Champion. The host school Johnsonville School had two
teams making the competition a 6 round-Swiss with 12 teams. From experience I have found this is a good
size for a tournament. For practical
reasons I try to not run tournaments with more than 50 children – though I try
to cater for all the schools that have a keen group of chess players. Various
teams were brought together by an enthusiastic parent or teacher and some teams
from my chess classes. The only
disappointment was not having any entries from schools that Mark van der
Hoorn coaches.
Karori Normal School
entered with a team name. This seemed a
good idea, so I invited the other teams to also come up with names as well. You can see the team names in the score-table
table below. Games were played with
clocks with 20 minutes + 5 second increments (a time control I copied from an Auckland event). The chess level was pretty good – I got away
without needing to explain the different between checkmate and stalemate or
other similar things. There was the odd
illegal move, with Kings being moved into check and they did play way too fast
for the time control…even one game I saw with the winner having 21 minutes on
his clock at the end! But overall it was
a pretty good level for a group of 50-odd children.
Now to the results…
Eastern Hutt School took
the early lead with 7/8 after two rounds and continued to hold the lead after
the third round. Johnsonville then took
the lead in round 4 with a 4-0 result against Karori Normal and held the lead
with a 3.5-0.5 win over Newlands. Going
into the last round the top two teams were paired against each other with Eastern Hutt being 2 points
behind Johnsonville. In the board one
clash, Sam Merton from Eastern Hutt defeated Karthik Konacanchi.
But his wasn’t enough and Johnsonville still took the match 2.5-1.5
claiming the Wellington Primary Schools Champion’s trophy. The final game in progress would decide 2nd
and 3rd places. A win for
Maungaraki’s ‘Kentucky Fried Checkmate’ team denied Newlands and Eastern Hutt came
second with Newlands third. Medals were
awarded to the members of the top 3 teams and certificates to all children that
took part.
Congratulations to the winning team: Karthik Konakanchi, Cameron
Phillips, Pramodh Konakanchi and Evgeny Zhilken. A young team with a lot of potential. Karthik and Cameron are both year 4
students. Karthik is already playing at
the Wellington Chess Club. His younger
brother Pramodh is only a year 1 student (6 years old) and sees things very
quickly on the chessboard - he is the speedster I witnessed with 21 minutes left
on his clock. Evgeny is a year 5 student,
a very enthusiastic chess player who is quickly making progress. The team qualify for the National school
finals in Mt Maunganui in September. Final
places are below.
The Johnsonville 1 team (left) against
Karori Normal
Place Name Score
1 Johnsonville 1 (Revenge of the Dragons) 19
2 Eastern Hutt (Kings of capture) 16
3 Newlands (The Forks) 15.5
4 Johnsonville 2 (King of the Nerds) 13
5-8 St Brigid’s (King's Army) 12
Cashmere Av (The Knightmares) 12
Maungaraki (Kentucky Fried
Checkmate) 12
Karori Normal (Knights
and Forks) 12
9 Northland 11
10 Crofton Downs (Prawns on Forks) 9.5
11 Waterloo (Royal Court) 7
12 St Theresas (All Saints) 5
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