Sussex Megafinal
Saturday 30th April 2011
Warden Park School, Cuckfield

Nationally, over 60,000 children enter the UK Chess Challenge through their School or Chess Club. In Sussex, 82 Schools joined in the fun this year resulting in over 350 children taking up their qualifying places at the Megafinal.

People came from far and wide - Bognor in the West to Rye in the East. Many thanks to everyone for foregoing a lie-in to arrive in good time so that the event was able to start promptly.

Some sections were particularly hard fought with many experienced County players competing. In fact, there were also no less than 12 England squad members present!

Three sections went to tie-break to decide the winner; Nadia Bral won the U11 girls title on sum of progressive scores from Mary Sturch, while in both the U9 and U10 boys the players had to be subjected to the stress of a playoff. In fact, the U9 boys was so close that the result was eventually decided by toss of a coin!

The arbiters (Chess-speak for referee) were very pleased with the behaviour and sportsmanship, with very few disputes arising. The enthusiasm to get into the halls at the start of each round was very impressive.

Congratulations to those children who qualified for the Southern Region Gigafinal in Reading in July - nearly 140 of them - the youngest being 5 year old Laura Borland.

Details can be found HERE and photos from the prizegiving HERE.

Two England Players swop tactics

Many many volunteers contributed to making this event happen.

In particular we would like to thank the loyal families who still turn out to help with this event despite their own children having outgrown it - Andrea Cumming, Louise Lambert, Sue Carter, Paula & Andy Payne.

Thanks also to Gary McCulloch and Karen Meakings for running the Under-7s tournament and clearing up the Sports Hall while everyone else went to prizegiving!

As usual, the Sussex Junior Chess catering machine proved popular and was kept busy all day - thanks to Isabel Keen, Ed Gooda, Derek Ferguson, Debbie & Ellina, and Linda Warwick.

Finally, thanks to the army of parents and friends who gave their time freely - helping to set up the playing halls, with registration, fielding enquires, handing out certificates and serving as pairers and board stewards.

We hope you and your child enjoyed the day. If so, we would love to see you at some of our other events. We run training sessions and tournaments at various venues across the county. Our calendar lists the events for the current season, which is drawing to a close. We hope to have our new calendar for the 2011-2012 season available by June or July.

We would welcome your feedback; if you have any comments, questions, or things you would like to have known before the event, please contact us HERE.