– National Junior Championship set for July 14
THE De Sinco Limited National Junior Chess Qualifiers concluded on Tuesday, July 11th, at the National Stadium, Providence, with an excellent performance from Ethan Lee, who emerged as the best player.
Lee finished on 6.5 points after seven rounds. His only draw was a round 6 clash against Keron Sandiford.
He also had wins against National Under-16 Girls Champion, Anaya Lall, and Under-16 Open Champion, Alexander Zhang, as well as against Aditi Joshi, Micaiah Enoe, Ronan Lee and Kishan Puran.

This puts Lee as the top contender to rival reigning champion Ricardo Narine, who is poised and ready to defend his title.
In 2022, when Narine first claimed the title, the championship had winded down to a tense battle between him and Lee who had tied on points and were forced to go to a play-off.

But Lee is not the only challenger Narine must prepare for, with the top 9 players in the qualifiers, eager for a chance to win the title of National Junior Champion 2023.
In second place is Keron Sandiford with 6 points, after drawing matches with Lee and National U-14 Open Champion Kyle Couchman, and winning his remaining games.
Alexander Zhang, Ronan Lee, Nicholas Zhang, Kyle Couchman, Matthew Singh and Oluwadare Oyeyipo all finished on five points each to take 3rd to 8th place respectively.

With 4.5 points, Kishan Puran took the final spot to continue on to the Championships.
Notable performances came from Logan Simpson, Italy Ton-Chung, Ethan Persaud and Omar Shariff who all ended on 4.5 points each.
The 2023 Junior National Championship will be played in a round Robin format under a time control of 90 minutes with 30-seconds increments. Games will be played between July 14th and 19th at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence.

The Junior Chess Championship Qualifier tournament attracted over 50 students from schools in Region One, Four, Six and 10, and was supervised by FIDE Arbiters, John Lee and Anand Raghunauth, assisted by top player CM Taffin Khan. The top 8 boards were broadcast live on you-tube and livechesscloud.com giving viewers at home a first-hand look at the juniors’ performances.
Special thanks to the event’s title sponsor, De Sinco Limited and Milex, one of Guyana’s leading distributors of fast-moving consumer goods.

Medals were presented to the top nine performers and to Italy Ton-Chung, who copped the best female prize for the tournament. De Sinco Limited also distributed gifts to all participants promoting their product Milex. Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Alicia De Abreu congratulated the players and commented on the familiar faces in chess she’s been seeing over the years since De Sinco Limited has been a sponsor.

She thanked the parents who took time off from their busy schedule to support their children in the game of chess.
Ms. De Abreu said De Sinco will continue to promote different brands in upcoming chess tournaments. Milex is the official brand for the National Junior Qualifiers and National Junior Championship 2023.