Carl Ja­cobs

Jayson Paul, 16-year-old Queen's Roy­al Col­lege stu­dent, is among the eleven play­ers who will vie for the 2009 na­tion­al chess cham­pi­onship ti­tle in Oc­to­ber. Paul, last year's Un­der-16 na­tion­al cham­pi­on, joined the group of fi­nal­ists by plac­ing sec­ond in the last of four qual­i­fy­ing con­tests which was won by Mar­cus Joseph. Paul and vet­er­an Frank Sears en­tered the sev­enth and last round on four points each. The QRC stu­dent drew his game with Dr Ed­di­son Chang to fin­ish on four and a half, while Sears lost to Col­in Knight. The first four rounds of the qual­i­fi­er were played in To­ba­go but, since no To­bag­o­ni­ans had en­tered the race, the last three were held in Trinidad.

Sev­en play­ers con­test­ed this qual­i­fi­er: Mar­cus Joseph who fin­ished with a per­fect score, Paul, Chang, Sears, Knight, Hay­den Lee and Dev Soon­dars­ingh. Paul is an­oth­er of the coun­try's promi­nent ju­niors, a prod­uct of the T&T Chess Foun­da­tion where he start­ed train­ing four years ago. His qual­i­fy­ing for the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship fi­nals is his best per­for­mance so far, al­though he has scored con­sis­tent­ly well in a num­ber of tour­na­ments. Last Ju­ly, the QRC boy, to­geth­er with a group of T&T stu­dents, spent ten days in Chi­na, at­tend­ing the Glob­al Young Lead­ers Con­fer­ence. Paul be­longs to a well-known chess play­ing fam­i­ly, the son of ar­biter Ral­ston Paul. His younger sib­lings, Jar­ry­on, Jonathan and Kirsten are al­so ac­tive tour­na­ment play­ers.

Paul joins Keron Cabralis in rep­re­sent­ing the ju­niors at the fi­nals which will be played in Oc­to­ber. Cabralis, form three St Mary's stu­dent, has an im­pres­sive record of achieve­ment be­hind him, in­clud­ing his sec­ond place in last year's cham­pi­onship fi­nals. They will face an elite group of se­nior play­ers led by cham­pi­on Rav­ishen Singh who sent a clear sig­nal of his in­ten­tons last Sat­ur­day by win­ning the Ari­ma Fest rapid play tour­na­ment. The oth­er fi­nal­ists are FM Chris­to Cave, FM Mario Mer­ritt, FM Frank Yee, FM Michael Pouchet, Mar­cus Joseph, Kishore Ra­mad­har and Leonard Dun­can. With such a strong field, the chess com­mu­ni­ty can ex­pect an­oth­er ex­cit­ing cli­max to the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship race.