Carl Ja­cobs

Not un­ex­pect­ed­ly, Ryan Harp­er has done it again. Af­ter first win­ning the T&T na­tion­al chess cham­pi­onship in 2002, the 39-year-old FIDE Mas­ter has now cap­tured the ti­tle for the eighth time.

He did it in fine style, fin­ish­ing the 11-round fi­nals on ten points af­ter con­ced­ing draws to sec­ond-placed FM Joshua John­son and out­go­ing na­tion­al cham­pi­on FM Kevin Cu­pid who took fifth place.

Harp­er's tal­ly of cham­pi­onship wins over the last 14 years is an im­pres­sive feat that, for many, in­ten­si­fies the thrill of his pur­suit af­ter Cristo Cave's record of win­ning a to­tal of 13 na­tion­al cham­pi­onships.

Harp­er who gave up his bank job to steep him­self in the sport he loves con­tin­ues to set an ex­am­ple in his con­sis­tent all-round achieve­ments, in tour­na­ments at home and abroad. Af­ter his first win in 2002, he scored a triple in 2005, 2006 and 2007. He fol­lowed this with a dou­ble in 2010 and 2011 and led the cham­pi­onship race again in 2013 and 2016. In this re­gard, he has long out­dis­tanced his ri­vals, leav­ing on­ly the chal­lenge left by Cave.

Just a point be­hind Harp­er, FM Joshua John­son not on­ly con­firms his con­sis­tent rise to the top but the young­ster al­so emerges as an­oth­er for­mi­da­ble chal­lenger for the cham­pi­onship. He drew with both Harp­er and FM Mario Mer­ritt but went un­der to ex-cham­pi­on Cu­pid.

Both hardy vet­er­an Mer­ritt and FM Adri­an Win­ter Atwell scored eight points for the third and fourth places. Ex-cham­pi­on Cu­pid gained the fifth spot on sev­en and a half points. For­mer cham­pi­on FM Frank Yee, not as ac­tive on the tour­na­ment cir­cuit as he used to be, still gar­nered five and a half points to place sixth. Three play­ers fol­lowed Yee on three and a half points each, CM Esan Wilt­shire, Sean Nedd and Kishore Ra­madar. The tail-en­ders were Keevin James, three, Hay­den Lee, two and a half, and Rick­son Thomas, two.

In the women's na­tion­al cham­pi­onship con­test, WFM Gabriel­la John­son fin­ished on top with a per­fect score of eight points which in­clud­ed de­fault wins against Akeisha Jones and Anusha Sa­ha. CM Shan­non Year­wood gained sec­ond place on six and a half with Amy Ali third on five and a half and WCM Shemi­lah James fourth on five points.

It seems some­what dis­ap­point­ing that the fi­nals of T&T's fe­male na­tion­al chess cham­pi­onship should be con­test­ed by a mere eight play­ers. Some­thing seems to be amiss here; with the in­creas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the sport in schools and the avail­abil­i­ty of prop­er coach­ing, this tour­na­ment should be at­tract­ing far more fi­nal­ists. Clear­ly this is a prob­lem for which the T&TCA should seek to find an­swers.

One of the dif­fi­cul­ties may well be the tim­ing of the fi­nals, oc­cur­ring dur­ing the school term. An­oth­er may well be the crowd­ed sched­ule of the fi­nals it­self with games be­ing played on Fri­days, Sat­ur­days and Sun­days. Why couldn't the fi­nals be sched­uled dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od?

The South­ern Chess Club re­vives its pop­u­lar the­mat­ic tour­na­ment se­ries on Sun­day No­vem­ber 13 with the King's In­di­an De­fence. Games will start af­ter the move or­der 1. d4 Nf6; 2. c4 g3, 3. Nc3 Bg7, 4. e4 d6. Each par­tic­i­pant will play the open­ing as both white and black over six rounds and 20 min­utes.

Guar­an­teed first prize: $400. Reg­is­tra­tion clos­es at 12.45 pm on the date of the tour­na­ment.