Vet­er­an FM Frank Yee has won the pres­ti­gious Knights Open chess tour­na­ment for the sec­ond time, con­firm­ing his sta­tus as one of the coun­try's top play­ers. Yee fin­ished the sev­en-round Swiss on six points, half a point ahead of sec­ond placed Sean Per­ry­man who held him to a draw in the fi­nal game. A com­put­er net­work ad­min­is­tra­tor at UWI, Yee has won every ma­jor con­test in the lo­cal chess are­na, ex­cept the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship. A reg­u­lar fi­nal­ist, he will al­so be seek­ing the ti­tle lat­er this year. Yee has rep­re­sent­ed T&T at sev­er­al Olympiads and played in sub-zon­als of the world cham­pi­onship in Venezuela and Equador where he gained his FIDE Mas­ter ti­tle.

With Yee and for­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­on Mar­cus Joseph shar­ing the lead af­ter five rounds in the Knights Open, the tour­na­ment seemed set for a thrilling fin­ish as the two were due to meet in the sixth round, mak­ing it a vir­tu­al fi­nal. Joseph, how­ev­er, failed to turn up, ex­plain­ing af­ter­wards that he had an im­por­tant ap­point­ment.

Joseph who de­feat­ed young­ster Jayson Paul in the fi­nal round fin­ished on five and a half to­geth­er with vet­er­an An­drew Bowles.

Dev Soon­dars­ingh, 25, has tak­en a no­table leap for­ward in the sport this year, scor­ing a num­ber of up­sets to take third place with five points. Soon­dars­ingh al­so qual­i­fied to con­test the fi­nals of the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship lat­er this year. FM Ryan Harp­er, na­tion­al cham­pi­on, tied for third place, al­so fin­ish­ing on five. For­mer cham­pi­on An­der­son Gor­don, on four and a half, tied for fourth place with Hay­den Lee, Leonard Dun­can, Ian Ali and Hec­tor Galle­ma­so. Fin­ish­ing half a point be­hind them were young­ster Jayson Paul, vet­er­an Frank Sears and Sam­son Wong. The Knights Open 2012 was the 39th edi­tion of this pop­u­lar tour­na­ment, the old­est an­nu­al event on the T&T chess cal­en­dar.