Three of T&T's bright young chess­play­ers made sport­ing his­to­ry on Sun­day when they de­feat­ed two lead­ing Grand­mas­ters (GM) from Cu­ba at si­mul­ta­ne­ous ex­hi­bi­tions held at RHAND Cred­it Union build­ing in Port-of-Spain.Na­tion­al ju­nior cham­pi­on Joshua John­son and CAC gold medal­list Joseph Gill out­played for­mer Cuban cham­pi­on Reinal­do Ve­ra, while Kevin Cu­pid, for­mer un­der-18 cham­pi­on, got the bet­ter of Manuel Perez, for­mer vice cham­pi­on of Cu­ba. No­table per­for­mances al­so came from for­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­on Arnold For­tune and young­sters Keevin James and Dev Soon­dars­ingh who held the GMs to draws.A to­tal of 27 play­ers took part in the ex­hi­bi­tions, which fol­lowed a break­fast func­tion be­tween ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion and the vis­it­ing GMs at which mea­sures for de­vel­op­ing the sport in T&T were dis­cussed.

The grit­ty, hard fought draw gained by For­tune, 75, against GM Ve­ra was spe­cial, since it was his first en­counter over the chess­board af­ter a long re­tire­ment. For­tune, a for­mer gov­ern­ment sur­vey­or, won the na­tion­al chess cham­pi­onship in 1964 and again in 1968 and is now the old­est liv­ing T&T ex-cham­pi­on. In win­ning his first na­tion­al ti­tle, he fin­ished with a per­fect score, de­feat­ing the sev­en oth­er fi­nal­ists who in­clud­ed such stal­warts as George Stan­ford, Fred Sab­ga and Li­onel Dechi.John­son, Gill and Cu­pid are out­stand­ing young­sters who rep­re­sent the fu­ture of chess in T&T."The suc­cess of our young play­ers is some­thing we can be proud of," said new­ly-elect­ed T&TCA pres­i­dent An­der­son Gor­don. "The GMs, in fact, not­ed that we have play­ers with the po­ten­tial of be­com­ing mas­ters, but they would need sig­nif­i­cant lev­els of coach­ing, reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pa­tion in in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments and, of course, the sup­port of spon­sor­ship."

Gor­don said the ad­vice giv­en by the Cuban GMs in their dis­cus­sions were quite use­ful and may be in­cor­po­rat­ed in the as­so­ci­a­tion's plans for de­vel­op­ing the sport.GM Ve­ra, 52, was the Cuban cham­pi­on in 1997 and 2001. He was a mem­ber of the Cuban na­tion­al team from 1980 to 2002 and won a gold medal on third board at the Elista Olympiad in Rus­sia in 1998. He was the train­er and cap­tain of the Cuban men's team at the last five Olympiads. Perez, 35, has par­tic­i­pat­ed in more than 100 in­ter­na­tion­al events. He was the Cuban vice cham­pi­on in 2004 and win­ner of the Ca­pa­blan­ca Memo­r­i­al in 1999. He was the train­er of both the ju­nior and na­tion­al fe­male teams.The GMs spent three days in Trinidad and, be­cause of short no­tice, arrange­ments for them to vis­it To­ba­go and San Fer­nana­do could not be made. "In this re­spect, the as­so­ci­a­tion is grate­ful to RHAND for ac­com­mo­dat­ing the si­mul­ta­ne­ous ex­hi­bi­tions in Port-of-Spain and for the sig­nif­i­cant as­sis­tance and en­cour­age­ment it con­tin­ues to ren­der to the sport."