ASTC Results, ChessKid.com Gold Memberships and Future Plans
Kate Woodley
Hi Everyone,
Some brief updates before the conclusion of the year.
2021 Australian Schools Teams Chess
Championships
For the second year in a row, the Australian Schools Teams Chess Championships were held in hybrid format (games played online but with teams from each state at a single venue, supervised by two arbiters) on December 4th & 5th.
For those not familiar with this event: the Australian School Teams Chess Championships (ASTC) are the official, Australian Chess Federation sanctioned, national schools’ championship which takes place every year over a single weekend in November or early December. Each state and territory is entitled to enter one representative team per division across four divisions (Primary Open, Primary Girls, Secondary Open and Secondary Girls). Teams compete against one another in a round-robin format. In hybrid format, games are played with a 30min+10sec time control.
With our usual Campbell High venue still unavailable for weekend use, and many venues not available for public hire post-lockdown, we only managed to confirm the hire of a venue (Chifley Community Room) shortly before the event, which unfortunately had no analysis rooms nor breakout areas for players, no room for parents and no WIFI. Our ACT players and families were, as always, wonderful about the difficult situation and I would like to thank each of them.
How did our four ACT representatives go?
For the second year in a row, Lyneham High School (Shriya
Karthik, Erin Milne, Sami Le and Luu Ha Tran) finished second in the Secondary Girls division on 14.5/20, just 1.5 points behind the winners, PLC (VIC). Turner School (Minchen
Yang, Somon Vos, Nomon Vos, Shakthi Karthik, Thomas Eleutherios) also put in a strong performance, winning or drawing all of their matches to finish third in the Primary Open division on 12.5/20. Canberra
Grammar School (Joshua Lee, Lachlan Ho, Thomas Lin, Oscar Ho, Joshua Steinman, Cameron Allnutt) had a tough time in the super-competitive Secondary Open
division but finished with a nice win over Perth Modern (WA). Kaleen Primary School (Pinipa
Liyanage, Lillian Nightingale, Jacinta Seetoh, Hannah Yun, Yiyi Chen, Yuejia Liu) scored some good wins in the Primary Girls division and gained valuable experience facing some of the best junior girl players in Australia.
Congratulations must also go to Sami Le who scored a superb 5/5 to win the Board Three prize in the Secondary Girls division, Luu Ha Tran who won the Board Four prize in the same division with a strong 4/5 and Nomon Vos who won the Board Three prize in the Primary Open division, being undefeated on 4.5/5.
Results can be seen here: https://sites.google.com/view/2021astc/results
Thank you to our two ASTC arbiters: Emma Guo and Shaun
Press for supporting the players and dealing with ongoing technical problems during the tournament, and to our ACT team co-ordinators: Sam
Bryant, Juliet Zhu, Naga Kadirvelu and David
Messina for organising their teams, communicating with their players, and getting everyone to the venue when they needed to be there. Thank you to
Diane and Brad for helping set up and pack up the venue.
We now wait for trophies and board prizes to arrive from QLD. I've been informed that the trophy order will be lodged prior to Christmas, so hope that we will receive them by the start of the school year. Once we receive the trophies, we will drop them to your school. For those players who are progressing to high school or college, I'll contact your parents to arrange delivery of your trophies.
Next year, the ASTC will likely resume its normal format as an over-the-board standard (60+10) tournament in Queensland. For those teams seeking to qualify, my advice is to start your training early in the new year and build up your playing experience with longer time controls.
ChessKid.com Gold Memberships - Coming Soon through the ACT Junior Chess League
The ACTJCL Committee recently voted to bulk purchase 100 Gold Chesskid.com annual memberships. Chesskid.com is arguably the best chess website for children aged 12 and under due to its superb instruction material. Annual Gold Memberships retail at AUD $69 but through the bulk purchase, the ACTJCL will be able to offer memberships at a discounted rated of approximately AUD $20 per annual membership, or slightly less if bundled with a 2022 ACTJCL membership. We are in the process of completing this purchase, so please keep an eye out for further details.
In the interim, feel free to peruse Chesskid.com's website: https://www.chesskid.com/what-is-chesskid
Under 14/16 Championship Trophies & Online Invitational Prizes
Apologies - I only recently picked up the u14/u16 trophies and have started distributing them and the Online Invitational Prizes.
Given the number of trophies, the easiest method of delivery is for me to drop them at your house (I can leave them in the mailbox if you’re not home).
Please keep an eye out for an email from me about arranging delivery.
What’s Happening in 2022?
We will be back in 2022, although we’re not sure when since we still don't have permission to use our Campbell High venue and have not been advised when we can return. Unfortunately, our lack of a venue meant that we had to postpone our new ACT Young Masters event in January.
Shaun intends to run some online events in January via our ACTJCL Lichess group. You can see instructions on how to join this group on the ACTJCL website actjcl.org.au (scroll down to the bottom).
I hope that you all have a fantastic Christmas and New Year.
Let's hope that 2022 turns out to be a better year.
Kate
Secretary, ACT Junior Chess League