Almost a third of players at the recent Orange Junior Chess Tournament, were first-timers who had never competed in a major contest before, a figure which bodes well for the event’s future.

Two girls were also the highest ranked players at the tournament, both winning seven matches each. 

Wet, wintry weekend did not dent numbers for the event — the four-yearly major “over-the-board” junior tournament for western NSW.

“We had a total of 11 new players who had never competed before at a major tournament, which is fantastic!”, event organiser, Bevan Clouston said.

“It’s good to see new players, we’re consistently getting 10 or 12 new players each tournament, a good sign for chess in the region,” he added.

The eight-game timed matches games played under tournament rules, saw a series of close results with a tie-breaker needed to determine the eventual winner between the two top players.

Chamathsara Mendis and Sarayu Prakashbabu had both won seven games each, with opponent ratings used for a countback decision seeing Chamathsara declared the ultimate winner. Third place in the opens, went to James Fowler with six out of eight wins.

The highest-rated 12 years and under player, was Jackson Munns with six wins; with the best 10 years and under performer being Jack Duggan with four wins and a stalemate out of eight games. 

Winner of the under-eights section was Patrick Moore with a total of 4.5 wins.

Player chess ratings — a progressive number that rises with the higher level that a player performs and impacted by these most-recent results — will be on the NSW Junior Chess league website (nswjcl.org.au) in the next few days. 

The next Orange Junior Chess Tournament will be held during the January 2023 school holidays.