On Tuesday 6 December the Junior School Chess Squad and lots of supportive parents made their way to Kensington Olympia to attend the London Chess Classic, a professional tournament involving nine of the world’s top players. The first challenge of the day was playing simultaneous matches against International Master, Adam Hunt. Out of the 11 Dulwich boys that Mr Hunt played, six boys were still in the match when time ran out. After adjudication Mr Hunt claimed victory in five of those six matches, but Girinath Haridas earned a very impressive draw.
Following the simultaneous matches the boys enjoyed a lecture from two Grand Masters, Daniel King and our own chess coach Chris Ward. The Grand Masters showed us the famous ‘Wizard Chess’ scene from Harry Potter and then talked us through the sequence of moves made by the characters. Then a student from each school present was invited up to play on the boards used by the Grand Masters. The boards were linked to the large screen so the audience could see their moves as the Grandmasters commentated. After his earlier performance, Giri was chosen as our representative and he earned a win by adjudication.
The afternoon was spent in tournament play. All of our boys won their first round matches so were pitted against other winners for the, much tougher, second round. Again the majority of our boys were successful but the event organisers hadn’t collated all the scores in time for the presentations. We look forward to receiving the results via email to see where we finally placed. Whatever the result, all of the boys enjoyed the experience immensely and will be better chess players because of it. Thank you to Chris Ward and to all the parents who gave up their day to support the boys.