Carl Ja­cobs

Four­teen-year-old south­ern­er Mikel Mar­tin pro­duced both the biggest up­set and the most out­stand­ing over­all per­for­mance at the re­cent Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Chess Sub Zon­als held in Bar­ba­dos. The Na­pari­ma Col­lege third for­mer bat­tled both sea­soned IM Delisle Warn­er and T&T na­tion­al cham­pi­on CM Kevin Cu­pid to draws while gain­ing the high­est num­ber of rat­ing points among mem­bers of the T&T con­tin­gent.

Mikel was the youngest play­er in this pre­mier event which at­tract­ed a to­tal of 44 play­ers from 11 coun­tries. He had a FIDE rat­ing of 1780 com­pared to Warn­er's 2144 and Cu­pid's 2170. He played nine games, five of them ex­ceed­ing four and a half hours long. His over­all achieve­ment seems even more im­pres­sive for the fact that sev­en of his nine op­po­nents were ti­tled play­ers and he did not play any with a rat­ing be­low his.

The south­ern young­ster al­so de­feat­ed the Aru­ba na­tion­al cham­pi­on Mark Bueno rat­ed 1877 and gained three ad­di­tion­al draws against FM Roger Ma­toewi, cham­pi­on of Suri­name rat­ed 2091, CM Jim­my Iz­ijk of the Nether­land An­tilles rat­ed 2024 and Ja­maican stal­wart FM Philip Corbin, au­thor of Ca­lyp­so Chess, rat­ed 2054.

Mikel's per­for­mance in Bar­ba­dos, fin­ish­ing one point short of the CM ti­tle, must come as no sur­prise as it tops his steady emer­gence in a string of ma­jor tour­na­ments at home. Last Jan­u­ary he tied with Isa­iah McIn­tosh in the Un­der 16 cham­pi­onship but lost the ti­tle on a tie-break. Mikel's love for the game, of course, is an in­her­i­tance from his fa­ther busi­ness­man David Mar­tin whose one-man achieve­ment in found­ing and lead­ing the Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian School Chess Club is one of the sport's suc­cess sto­ries.

Apart from Mikel's no­table achieve­ment, T&T al­so gained two new FIDE Mas­ters at the Sub Zon­als; Adri­an Win­ter Atwell and na­tion­al cham­pi­on Kevin Cu­pid who scored six points each and fin­ished in sixth and eighth place re­spec­tive­ly. For­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­on Ryan Harp­er scored 5.5 points to place 11th.

The fe­male sec­tion of the event drew 26 par­tic­i­pants, with T&T's Shemi­lah James plac­ing 11th on five points thus earn­ing the WCM ti­tle.

Her team­mates, WCM Gabriel­la John­son and WCM Adi­ti Soon­dars­ingh, al­so kept the coun­try's colours fly­ing; both scor­ing 4.5 and plac­ing 12th and 13th re­spec­tive­ly.

The coun­try's ju­nior chess agen­da will be an­oth­er ac­tive one this year thanks to the T&T Chess Foun­da­tion. It starts with the One-day Rapid Play next Sat­ur­day or­gan­ised by the Foun­da­tion and spon­sored by First Flight Air Am­bu­lance. This pop­u­lar ju­nior event comes off at Na­pari­ma Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, and fea­tures cash prizes in five cat­e­gories to­geth­er with tro­phies for the top eight places.

Next comes the In­di­an Ar­rival Day tour­na­ment at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege on May 30. This will be fol­lowed in Ju­ly by a one-day event at the Holy Name Con­vent, Clifton Hill, Pt Fortin, in sup­port of the Chess-in-Schools pro­gramme be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Ro­tary Club.

The Foun­da­tion's ef­forts come to a cli­max in Au­gust at the an­nu­al Caribbean Chess Car­ni­val to be held at the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.

Af­ter 14 years, this event has be­come some­thing of a clas­sic, bring­ing teams of young chess play­ers from coun­tries across the re­gion in one com­pet­i­tive but friend­ly event.