ANTHONY Drayton played undefeated, at last weekend’s CARICOM Day, One-Day Rapid Chess tournament, at the National Resource Centre, Woolford Avenue.Drayton the highest World Chess Federation (FIDE)-rated player locally with 1 947 rating points was unstoppable securing seven points from seven games. Second place was picked up by Chino Chung with five points after he suffered losses to Drayton and Errol Tiwari, while Loris Nathoo ended on four and half points to secure the final podium position. Alexander Duncan and Errol Tiwari ended on four points apiece.
In the junior category St Stanislaus College student Joshua Gopaul got the better of Davion Mars and Roberto Neto to secure the top podium position. Gopaul and Mars finished on four points apiece, but got the win on the progressive score tiebreaker.
Meanwhile, the GCF says that FIDE has approved a pilot programme to introduce the sport at the primary school level. This is according to president of the GCF Irshad Mohamed, who spoke recently to the media. He indicated that the federation had prior discussions with the Education Ministry on the topic.
“An approval has just been given by the world chess federation FIDE to donate 200 chess boards and 20 chess clocks for our chess in schools programme. Last year we did meet with the Chief Education Officer Olato Sam and we did work out a pilot project which we are looking to start a bit later this year.”
The programme, according to the Chess boss will place a stronger emphasis on the development of the sport from the grassroots level and in the same vein aid to identify potential targets who can become future champions. He reminded that chess comes two-fold with added benefit of ensuring that academia and sport go hand-in-hand.
“It’s not only to play the game but also to help kids academically in terms of strategic thinking and problem-solving matters in terms of mathematics. Internationally, scholars have associated chess with maths but the whole idea is to get chess as part of the school programme and the way we see it is to start as a pilot project, selecting about 20 schools. But our focus will be more on the primary level because we need to get them to start as young as possible.”
Meanwhile, as part of its exposure drive, the Federation is looking to send two players to Trinidad and Tobago next month where they will match strokes with the best from that country and around the world.