Ju­nior chess star Keron Cabralis has with­drawn from the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship fi­nals be­cause of prob­lems at the venue, St Georges Col­lege. Cabralis, the youngest Fide Mas­ter in the Caribbean, pulled out of the tour­na­ment dur­ing his first round game on Sat­ur­day af­ter com­plain­ing a num­ber of times about the loud noise com­ing from mem­bers of the school's cadet corps train­ing in the ad­join­ing cor­ri­dor.Cabralis who was con­test­ing the na­tion­al fi­nals for the fourth time said he was not ac­cus­tomed to play­ing chess at that lev­el in such noisy con­di­tions which made it dif­fi­cult for him to con­cen­trate.

The 16-year-old St Mary's Col­lege stu­dent was hop­ing to add the 2011 na­tion­al ti­tle to his many out­stand­ing achieve­ments in the game, par­tic­u­lar­ly since next year would en­gross him in schol­ar­ship stud­ies at St Mary's. In 2009, he missed the ti­tle close­ly by plac­ing joint sec­ond with Ryan Harp­er and Mar­cus Joseph. Quintin Cabralis, Keron's fa­ther and for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion, de­scribed the St Georges Col­lege venue as most un­suit­able for such a con­test. In a let­ter of com­plaint to the As­so­ci­a­tion he called for a cor­rec­tion of er­rors and a lift­ing of stan­dards.

He re­mind­ed the Guardian that un­der his lead­er­ship the As­so­ci­a­tion was able to se­cure the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel in St Ann's for the fi­nals last year. He said that the prop­er re­search was not done in choos­ing a venue for such an im­por­tant event.With­draw­al of Cabralis from the fi­nals re­duces the in­ter­est of the con­test but it will not af­fect the fix­tures of the round-robin event.