League season underway for junior teams

Both Shrewsbury Juniors and Newport Juniors found their opening league matches tough going down 4-1 and 5-0 respectively.

For Shrewsbury the half points came from Chris Lovejoy (who drew after being too polite to play on and win on time!) and Angelica Dean.

Shifnal & Telford D v Shrewsbury Juniors 4 - 1
A Jones 1, F Rooney 0;
R Brown 0.5, C Lovejoy 0.5;
P Broderick 1, M Best 0;
R Szwajkun 1, H Graham 0;
T Skidmore 0.5, A Dean 0.5.

Newport Juniors v Wellington B 0 - 5
J Newey 0, K Hickmott 1;
J Allan 0, D Powell 1;
M Richards 0, D Ogundipe 1;
H Davenport 0, J Kuczynski 1;
R Heath 0, D Wright 1.

First county match of season

The first county match of the season for Shropshire Juniors took place on 3 October. This season the team is competing in the Midlands Chess association under 140 section. As it's a 16-board event, there will be a mix of adults and juniors to make up the team.

The first match was a tough one and ended with a 12-4 defeat to Warwickshire with wins for Graham Shepherd, Ian Davies an Maisy Pugh and draws for Athar Mehmood and Vinnie Crean. Unfortunately a couple of transport problems meant that we defeated three boards.

Juniors playing their debut match for the county were Richard Heath and Laura Newey

	Shropshire	ECF CODE	GRADE	SCORE	Warwickshire	ECF CODE	GRADE	SCORE
	white on odd				white on even
1	Shepherd, Graham C	118873C	139	1	Harrington, Michael J	156103A	137	0
2	Mehmood, Athar	264465E	133	½	Choudhury, Shakeel	269822F	135	½
3	Davies, Ian G	136893L	131	1	Al-Samir, Medhi	270896G	133	0
4	Default			0	Brelsforth, Dave	172043A	138	1
5	Salter, Ivor	118435A	120	0	Jimenez, Frank C	113645J	132	1
6	Default			0	Pitt, Chris W	129346B	131	1
7	Micallef, Charles	273522C	112	0	Walker, Mike BA	120981E	131	1
8	Rooney, Francis	264469B	110	0	Gilbert, Kim T	111228E	129	1
9	Crean, Vincent	143038F	109	½	Phipps, Malcolm J	117082L	129	½
10	Pugh, Maisy			1	Llewelyn, John D	114495K	128	0
11	Best, Matthew	269317D	95	0	Hussain, Adrian	256357F	128	1
12	Newey, Jonathan	267845H	91	0	Green, John	273516H	125	1
13	Dean, Angelica	273523E	72	0	Hodkinson, Peter	249822E	120	1
14	Default			0	Leaper, Richard D	192092D	117	1
15	Heath, Richard			0	Pakenham, John H	116631B	114	1
16	Newey, Laura			0	Hughes, Peter J	270857H	111	1
	RESULT			4				12

First Academy session of season

The first session for Shropshire Junior Chess Academy takes place this Saturday (3 Oct) at Trinity School, Ford, near Shrewsbury from 10am to 12pm.

The Academy started last season and has already seen its first candidates successfully reach accreditation for the Pawn and Knight levels. The events are a mix of coaching, fun games and competitions.

The Academy is open to under 18s chess players in the county of all abilities. Just turn up on Saturday and get involved.

After the Academy this Saturday there will be the first match for the county junior team against Warwickshire starting at 1.30pm. This season the juniors are taking part in the Under 140 grade section of the Midlands Chess Association competition.

Shropshire Under 18s take on the UK's best

Shropshire juniors took on top teams from around the country in the National Youth Chess Association under 18 event held at Abraham Darby School, Telford on Saturday (26 September).

Although the eight-board team were heavily outgraded in all their four matches, there were some very good individual performances including Nathanael Paul on board 3 (2.5/4); Francis Rooney on board 5 (2/4) and Mark Richards on board 7 (2/4). There was also an under 14 event held on the same day in which Shropshire junior Athar Mehmood played with the Staffordshire team on top board, scoring 3/4 and winning a board prize.

Shropshire U18 team and club: 1. Craig Whitfield (Staffs) 2. Ieuan Fenton (Oswestry) 3. Nathanael Paul (Coddon) 4. Peter Mellor (Coddon) 5. Francis Rooney (Shrewsbury/Church Stretton) 6. Chris Lovejoy (Shrewsbury) 7. Mark Richards (Newport) 8. Matthew Best (Shrewsbury)

Revised league fixtures

There have been some changes to the earlier published fixture list. The Calendar of dates on the left has now been updated to show the new fixtures for Shrewsbury and Newport Juniors this season which kicks off next month.

Official 2009 grades

Shropshire Junior grades 2009

Following some further amendments by ECF in late August these are now the official grades for the 2009-10 season.

Ieuan Fenton (Oswestry) 175
Louis Graham 166
Athar Mehmood (Newport) 133
Nathanael Paul (Coddon) 131
Peter Mellor (Coddon) 125
Francis Rooney (Shrewsbury/Church Stretton) 110
Christopher Lovejoy (Shrewsbury/Church Stretton) 104
Huw Davenport (Newport) 99
Mark Richards (Newport) 98
Jamie Allan (Newport) 97
Matthew Best (Shrewsbury) 95
Henry Graham (Shrewsbury) 90
Jonathan Newey (Shrewsbury) 91
Luke West (Newport) 80
Angelica Dean (Shrewsbury) 72
Joseph Mellor (Coddon) 64
Matthew Mellor (Coddon) 56
Katherine Lovejoy (Shrewsbury) 50

Full list of Shropshire grades here - http://rutterchess.741.com/Grades_2009.htm

New grades online

The 2009 grades are now online at http://grading.bcfservices.org.uk/

Quite a few have topped the 100-mark and there are large increases for some of our juniors as anticipated.(Remember that these grades also represent a major revision which has seen a lot of junior grades lifted.)

I'll put the full list of grades on here shortly.

HOWEVER, be warned that there could still be revisions to this list before it becomes official for the coming season. I don't see any Shropshire grades that I would consider out of order but there are some incidences across the country of significantly "overgraded" juniors that may mean there is further tinkering with the system of allocating these grades.