The Knights Chess Club's Open Tour­na­ment is poised for an ex­cit­ing last round fin­ish with three play­ers in the lead on five points each. Ju­nior star Keron Cabralis is tied with vet­er­ans Ce­cil Lee and Ed­di­son Chang, top­ping the field of 20 play­ers in the pop­u­lar an­nu­al con­test. Half a point be­hind them is young­ster Justin Sal­loum re­turn­ing to tour­na­ment chess af­ter com­plet­ing his schol­ar­ship stud­ies. Sal­loum seems to have lost lit­tle form dur­ing his long lay­off as he held Cabralis to a hard-fought draw in the sixth round.

FM Ryan Harp­er is on four points, beat­en by Ce­cil Lee in the sixth. Three oth­er play­ers share the third place with him, na­tion­al cham­pi­on Mar­cus Joseph, Hay­den Lee and An­drew Bowles. FM Frank Yee is on 3.5 points.

The an­nu­al Knights Chess Club's Open Tour­na­ment, now in its 37th year, is the coun­try's longest run­ning open tour­na­ment. The event, played on Thurs­days at RHAND Cred­it Union build­ing in Port of Spain and spon­sored by En­de­co, has made his­to­ry by be­ing the first chess con­test to of­fer mon­ey prizes and to be rat­ed by the world chess body. Win­ner of the Knights Open will re­ceive $1500. Those plac­ing sec­ond to sixth will re­ceive re­spec­tive­ly $1000, $700, $500, $400 and $300. Four spe­cial prizes of $200 will be pre­sent­ed to the Best Ju­nior, Best Fe­male, Best U17 ELO and Best Un­rat­ed.

Prize-giv­ing func­tion will be held at RHAND on Thurs­day June 10. Last round fix­tures: Cabralis v Chang; Sal­loum v C. Lee; Harp­er v Bowles; H. Lee v M. Joseph; John­son v Yee; Grant v Dun­can; Sears v Heer­ah; Wilt­shire v Solomon; Cas­sar v Mer­ritt; Everon v Primus; Ja­cobs v Paul; Seaforth v Gabriel­la John­son; Valen­tine v Joanne Rat­tan Chung.