For many years the play­ers who qual­i­fied in To­ba­go to vie for the na­tion­al chess cham­pi­o­nion­ship have been Trinida­di­ans.

The rea­son for this ap­par­ent anom­aly, of course, has been the lack of any kind of con­sis­tent or­gan­i­sa­tion or pro­mo­tion of the sport in To­ba­go. If chess was played dur­ing this pe­ri­od it was large­ly as a recre­ation­al pas­time among a few diehard vet­er­ans whose chal­lenge for na­tion­al ho­n­ours now makes an­cient his­to­ry.

As a re­sult, the an­nu­al open To­ba­go qual­i­fi­er, one of four such con­tests in the coun­try, be­came quite at­trac­tive to a group of am­bi­tious Tri­ni play­ers who would reg­u­lar­ly fly to the is­land seek­ing an­oth­er and less com­pet­i­tive en­try in­to the na­tion­al fi­nals.

The cur­rent year, how­ev­er, has seen a some­what dra­mat­ic change to this odd pat­tern. The long Tri­ni dom­i­na­tion of the To­ba­go qual­i­fi­er may well have end­ed with the im­pres­sive vic­to­ry of Dr Sean Nedd who fin­ished the six round 16-play­er con­test on five and a half points. To­ba­go-born Dr Nedd, who gained his doc­tor­ate in chem­istry at US uni­ver­si­ties, de­feat­ed a string of five Tri­ni en­trants con­ced­ing on­ly one draw to young­ster CM Sean Year­wood. His "con­quests" in­clud­ed such promi­nent play­ers as FM Joshua John­son, Frank Sears, Syl­van Seaforth, David May­nard and Lew­son Thomas.

Dr Nedd who honed his chess skills in both over-the-board play and com­put­er com­pe­ti­tion may well be the first To­bag­on­ian to en­ter the fi­nals for the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship. This feat alone cre­ates chess his­to­ry, but it would cer­tain­ly be­come in­deli­ble if he should suc­ceed in win­ning the coun­try's chess crown. Dr Nedd's par­tic­i­pa­tion thus cre­ates a fas­ci­nat­ing prospect in this year's race to the ti­tle.

Dr Nedd's vic­to­ry in the To­ba­go qual­i­fi­er co­in­cides with an in­creas­ing surge of chess de­vel­op­ment on the is­land. This is large­ly the re­sult of a reg­u­lar train­ing pro­gramme at the is­land's sec­ondary schools un­der­tak­en by the To­ba­go Chess So­ci­ety un­der pres­i­dent Sibel James as­sist­ed by a team of se­nior play­ers in­clud­ing vice pres­i­dent Law­son Thomas, Dr Nedd, and vet­er­ans Tuku Mo­hei­ni, Vaughn Lap­tiste, Clay­ton Rogers and Nigel Duke. The So­ci­ety's pro­gramme now co­in­cides with the ef­fort un­der­tak­en about three years ago by the T&T Chess Foun­da­tion in part­ner­ship with the RAND Cred­it Union. It al­so runs along­side chess ac­tiv­i­ty at the Pen­te­costal Light and Life High School over­seered by Joel Pe­ters.

James ex­pressed the So­ci­ety's grat­i­tude to the T&TCA, the Min­istry for To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment and the Scar­bor­ough Li­brary for their as­sis­tance. While he is pleased with the progress of the sport on the is­land, in­clud­ing suc­cess of To­ba­go's first Open tour­na­ment in 2014, James notes that ex­pan­sion­ist work of the So­ci­ety is still hand­i­capped by a lack of funds. Chess, he be­lieves, can al­so help to build a bet­ter so­ci­ety in To­ba­go and he ap­peals for greater sup­port for the So­ci­ety's ef­forts par­tic­u­lar­ly among the is­land's young peo­ple.

His hope is that the To­ba­go Open to be held by the So­ci­ety in Au­gust will get the sup­port it needs.

Chess in To­ba­go is mov­ing ahead, and the ex­pec­ta­tion is that, soon­er or lat­er, its na­tion­al qual­i­fi­er will no longer be dom­i­nat­ed by in­com­ing Tri­nis.