Carl Ja­cobs

A re­view of the year 2010 in­di­cates a num­ber of no­table de­vel­op­ments, in­clud­ing the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the Uma­da Cup in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment, the spa­cious venue ob­tained at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and the spon­sor­ship of PKF Char­tered &Ar­ing;ccoun­tants and Busi­ness Ad­vi­sors which as­sures that all na­tion­al events will be ful­ly fund­ed. In terms of play­ing achieve­ments, 14-year-old St Mary's Col­lege stu­dent Keron Cabralis be­came the coun­try's youngest FIDE Mas­ter at the Sub-Zon­als in Nas­sau and, at the same time, qual­i­fied for the Zon­al Cham­pi­onships to be played in Ec­quador next year, an un­prece­dent­ed achieve­ment for a T&T play­er. FM Ryan Harp­er re­gained the na­tion­al ti­tle, his fifth vic­to­ry; Adi­ti Soon­dars­ingh main­tained her dom­i­nance among fe­male play­ers, win­ning her sixth cham­pi­onship, and the na­tion­al fi­nals saw four young­sters in ac­tion, Cabralis (3rd ap­pear­ance), Ja­son Paul (2nd), Vish­nu Singh and Joshua John­son (first). Nine-year-old Gabriel­la John­son al­so made his­to­ry by be­ing the coun­try's youngest par­tic­i­pant at the Olympiad, and Rus­sell Smith be­came the first T&T chess ac­tivist to be on the FIDE Ex­ec­u­tive as Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of the Amer­i­c­as

Cabralis al­so ex­pressed the As­so­ci­a­tion's ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the Min­istry of Sport and Youth &Ar­ing;ffairs "with­out whom we would not have made such sig­nif­i­cant strides."