This weekend saw the last of this year's youth trials, held over 2 days at Umhlali Preparatory School in the ILembe district. Close to a hundred players took part and enjoyed 6 rounds of rated chess. The surprising winner of the under 20 section (and best under 16 player) was Yasheel Maharaj, who scored 5 out of 6. He drew with top seed Miguel Murugan in the last round, and defeated number 2 seed Gregory Hall with a very nice piece sacrifice in round 3 - unfortunately his game score was not legible so I cannot show you this game. Best under 18 player was Llewellyn Iyer and best under 20 player was Miguel Murugan. Here are some photos I took of the under 20 section:
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| Llewelyn Iyer vs Yasheel Maharaj on board 1 |
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Gregory Hall, Richard Paterson and Yasheel Maharaj
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| Top seed Miguel Murugan vs Gregory Hall, James Hulett on next board |
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Not surprisingly the under 14 section was won by top seed Sachin Reddy, with a perfect score. Sachin has been chosen to represent South Africa in this age category. Some photos of the under 14's:
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| Kayler Hulett and Frederick Paynter in u14 section |
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| Dylan Atherstone went on to win this game vs Paynter |
The other section winners were Cameron Evetts (under 12), Jamie Evetts (under 10) and Kiegan Padayachee (under 8).
Here are the final results for each age group:
