Chess Success!

P6/7 Chess Champions. Thank you to Anna Davis for this great photo

Chess Club

What a start! The chess season kicked off on the 22nd November at Wester Hailes with Sciennes entering four teams. The highlight of the day was the P7/U A Team winning the tournament. This was a real achievement as they won the largest ever tournament and beat Tiger Cubs along the way. To put this into perspective, Tiger Cubs had two Scottish internationalists representing them. The members of our winning team were: 
Sergei Mackinlay-Vich 
Matthew Ross 
Matilda Ball Torokoff 
Aidan Davis 
A big congratulations to them all and a special mention to Matthew who ended the day with a perfect 5/5. The team received a large shield named after our former head coach, Bill Platts. Bill received this honour for his excellent services to junior chess. Our B and C teams also played superbly and despite both teams being a player short, they managed to finish mid-table. 
The P5/U team were playing in a very competitive section but played valiantly and finished joint third. Jennifer and Johnathan Feng had fantastic debuts scoring 4 out of 5. 
It is not just our current pupils that are excelling at chess. Former pupil Ioannis Dabos-Doukas has just finished representing Scotland at the World Youth Championships. With 150 players in his section, Ioannis scored 5 out of 11 against the very best players in the World. This was the top Scottish performance among the squad of 16. We are very fortunate to have Ioannis as one of junior coaches at Sciennes Chess Club. Congratulations Ioannis! 

Andrew Green 
Head Coach