Carl Ja­cobs

Con­grat­u­la­tions to 24-year-old CM Kevin Cu­pid for win­ning this year's Na­tion­al Chess Cham­pi­onship, top­ping a list of 12 fi­nal­ists in­clud­ing sev­er­al of the coun­try's most dis­tin­guished play­ers. The for­mer Holy Cross Col­lege stu­dent fin­ished the 11 round con­test on nine points, los­ing on­ly to David Christo­pher and draw­ing with FM Frank Yee and CM Dev Soon­dars­ingh. Among his con­quests was FM Joshua John­son, 16-year-old ju­nior star, who took sec­ond place with eight points af­ter a storm­ing fin­ish of four straight vic­to­ries.

Cu­pid con­firmed his rapid­ly im­prov­ing skills by his oth­er vic­to­ries against CM Adri­an Win­ter Atwell, for­mer cham­pi­on An­der­son Gor­don and FM Mario Mer­ritt who scored six and a half points each and fin­ished third, fourth and fifth, re­spec­tive­ly. Cu­pid al­so de­feat­ed ex-cham­pi­on FM Ryan Harp­er, vet­er­an Hay­den Lee, Ma­hen­dra Singh and vet­er­an CM Frank Sears.

The young T&T chess cham­pi­on cred­its much of his suc­cess to the train­ing he has re­ceived from Harp­er and two for­eign coach­es, Pun­tos Carlsen of Swe­den and Rach­manov Alexan­der of Rus­sia.

Cu­pid be­gan his chess ca­reer at Holy Cross Col­lege where he spent five years and emerged as the school's best play­er. Then he en­tered the tour­na­ment cir­cuit play­ing with in­creas­ing suc­cess in the Na­tion­al Un­der-18, the Or­chard Grand Prix, the Sagi­cor tour­na­ment in Bar­ba­dos where he placed third in the U-16 group. He fin­ished fourth in last year's east qual­i­fi­er and sec­ond in this year's pre­lim­i­nary.

Hav­ing cap­tured the na­tion­al chess ti­tle, the young eco­nom­ics stu­dent is now look­ing for wider con­tests to con­quer. Next year, for ex­am­ple, he will be lead­ing the T&T team at the Olympiad at Baku in Azer­bai­jan. Al­so on his prospec­tive agen­da are the Sub Zon­als in Bar­ba­dos and GM Mau­rice Ash­ley's Mil­lion­aire Chess in Las Ve­gas for which, of course, he would re­quire the help of spon­sors. This unique open event of­fers the sport's high­est mon­ey prizes and at­tracts top class play­ers from across the world. It has be­come quite pop­u­lar be­cause even am­a­teurs can win huge amounts in their re­spec­tive rat­ing groups.

How far the new T&T cham­pi­on will even­tu­al­ly set his sights in the chess world, whether to pur­sue IM or GM ti­tles for ex­am­ple, would de­pend large­ly on his per­for­mance in Baku, Las Ve­gas and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al con­tests where he will test his skills against gi­ants of the in­ter­na­tion­al mind game.

Adi­ti Soon­dars­ingh re­gained the Na­tion­al Women's Cham­pi­onship play­ing un­beat­en in the nine round con­test. In an­oth­er keen­ly fought women's fi­nal, she fin­ished on eight, edg­ing out by half a point sec­ond placed WFM Ja­van­na Smith, the for­mer cham­pi­on. Soon­dars­ingh con­ced­ed draws to Shan­non Year­wood who scored sev­en and a half and WCM Gabriel­la John­son on sev­en, the two fin­ish­ing third and fourth, re­spec­tive­ly.

Apart from win­ning the na­tion­al ti­tle nine times, Soon­dars­ingh has wide ex­pe­ri­ence in rep­re­sent­ing T&T in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. She played top board at four world Olympiads, in Mal­lor­ca, Spain; Dres­den Ger­many; Siberia, Rus­sia and Is­tan­bul, Turkey. At Is­tan­bul, she be­came the first T&T play­er to de­feat a woman IM, Iman Al-Ru­faye of Iraq. Soon­dars­ingh al­so rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the World Youth Cham­pi­onship in France, at the Com­mon­wealth Games in In­dia and in tour­na­ments in Bar­ba­dos, Venezuela and El Sal­vador.

The prize-giv­ing func­tion for these events will be held at the tour­na­ment venue RHAND Cred­it Union, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day No­vem­ber 7. For the first time, tro­phies will al­so be pre­sent­ed to the Ab­solute Cham­pi­on, the Fe­male Cham­pi­on and win­ner of the Na­tion­al Blitz con­test.

Fol­low­ing is the list of mon­ey prizes: Ab­solute: First, $3,000; sec­ond, $2,500; third, $1,500; fourth, $1,000; fifth, $800; sixth to 12th, $500. Fe­male Cham­pi­onship: First, $2,000; sec­ond, $1,500; third, $1,000; fourth, $500; 5th, $300. Na­tion­al Blitz: First, $1,000; sec­ond, $700; third, $500.