Southern Gigafinal
Saturday/Sunday 3rd-4th July 2010
Wellington College, Berkshire

The UK Chess Challenge journey started back in January in school chess clubs across the country with 68,000 children entering nationwide.

360 Sussex children qualified for the Sussex megafinal held in May, of whom 140 qualified for the Southern Gigafinal. Of those, 104 took up their places, becoming part of the last 2500 players left in the competition nationwide - a fantastic achievement.

Younger boys (U7 - U10) competed on the Saturday, while all other age groups and all girl sections competed on the Sunday.

The Sussex players also had a loyal supporter, in the shape of Jonathan, who heroically attended both days! Thanks also to coach Gary McCulloch who attended on Saturday despatching help and encouragement, and to Mike Forster who assisted with board stewarding in the younger age groups.

Children competed in sections according to age and gender.

Players who scored 3.5 points or more earned a rosette.

Section winners earned the title Ultimo (boys), or Ultima (girls), and qualified for the final stage of the competition - the national Terafinal in August. Those coming second or third qualified for the 'Challengers' competition which runs alongside the Terafinal.

Sections with large entries were split into parallel sub-sections, resulting in multiple ultimos in some age groups. The rules of the competition state that in the event of a tie for first place the prize money can be shared, but there has to be a play-off to determine the title holder. Cassie Graham (U9 girl) was put through this nervewracking experience, and in one of the older age groups a winner still didn't emerge after two play-offs and was eventually determined by the toss of a coin!

Congratulations to our Terafinal and Challengers qualifiers:-

Special mention to David Liu and Sebastian Pollard (U10) and Robert Fitzgerald, Toby Harris and Ollie Willson (U12) - who, despite scoring 4.5 found themselves in joint third and fourth place respectively, just missing qualification.

Well done also to those who scored an excellent 4 points, again just missing out on qualification:-
Edward Critchley, Freya Finnegan, Yelena Finnegan, Will Graham, David Grant, Josh Higgs, Daniel Manvell, Sophia Martin, Steven Riley, George Salimbeni and Henry Roser.

Well done to all the Sussex players who competed - just to qualify for the Gigafinal is an achievement in itself.

Full results will appear on the UK Chess Challenge website in due course.

Photos can be found HERE. If you were at Saturday's prizegiving and would like to contribute a photo or an anecdote, please contact us.