Carl Ja­cobs

Joshua Co­las, 11-year-old New York chess star, is among the large con­tin­gent of for­eign chess play­ers ex­pect­ed to com­pete in the in­ter­na­tion­al Chess Car­ni­val which comes off at the Queen's Park Oval, St Clair, from Au­gust 3 to 8. With a rat­ing of 2118, Co­las is well on his way to mak­ing US chess his­to­ry by be­com­ing the youngest African-Amer­i­can ever to at­tain the lev­el of Mas­ter.

Co­las, a sixth-grad­er who has set his heart on earn­ing the Grand­mas­ter ti­tle, will play in the open sec­tion of the Chess Car­ni­val and seems cer­tain to be a source of ex­cite­ment play­ing in his first over­seas tour­na­ment. The T&T Chess Foun­da­tion an­nu­al event, spon­sored by the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, may well be the Joshua's sternest test as the tour­na­ment has at­tract­ed a to­tal of six Mas­ters from the re­gion with one, Oladipo Adu, com­ing from Nige­ria. Re­turn­ing to de­fend the Chess Car­ni­val ti­tle he has won over the last three years is Hum­ber­to Pecorel­li of Cu­ba. An­oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing Cuban, Ger­al­do Labre­do, took the third prize in last year's event. Two Mas­ters from Venezuela, Julio Os­tos and Rafael Pras­ca Sosa, and two from Bar­ba­dos, Kevin Den­ny and Ter­ry Far­ley, are al­so in the con­test. Apart from the Mas­ters, the Chess Car­ni­val, now in its eighth year, is at­tract­ing play­ers from T&T, the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, in­clud­ing Colom­bia, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Suri­name, Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe. The tour­na­ment will see ac­tion in two main cat­e­gories, the Open and three ju­nior sec­tions, Un­der 10, Un­der 14 and Un­der 20.

Ac­cord­ing to Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Ed­di­son Raphael, two new groups have been added, Ju­nior Novice and Adult Novice, to ac­co­mo­date play­ers who have learned the game through the T&TCF's Let's Play Chess pro­gramme held in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try over the last year. "As an in­cen­tive to play­ers from To­ba­go, we will be of­fer­ing them free ac­co­mo­da­tion in Port-of-Spain dur­ing the tour­na­ment," he added. Be­cause of his age, his achieve­ments and his pas­sion for the game, Joshua Co­las is ex­pect­ed to be a cen­tre of at­trac­tion at the in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ment. The New York young­ster's skill is re­gard­ed as re­mark­able es­pe­cial­ly for the fact that, since he learned to play the game by watch­ing his fa­ther, he has nev­er had the ben­e­fit of a per­son­al coach. His abil­i­ty be­came ap­par­ent at age sev­en and three years lat­er he had at­tained the lev­el of ex­pert. Last May, Joshua was cho­sen by the US Chess Fed­er­a­tion to rep­re­sent the coun­try in the Boys 12 and Un­der sec­tion of the 2010 World Youth Cham­pi­onships to be held in Halkidi­ki, Greece, next Oc­to­ber.

In De­cem­ber 2008, Co­las led the Ma­maro­neck Av­enue School chess team to a na­tion­al cham­pi­onship in Or­lan­do. This was con­sid­ered quite an ac­com­plish­ment con­sid­er­ing that scholas­tic chess had been dom­i­nat­ed for decades by elite Man­hat­tan schools. While in Or­lan­do, Joshua earned his first in­di­vid­ual na­tion­al ti­tle by win­ning the 2008 Scholas­tic Speed Chess Cham­pi­onship in the el­e­men­tary school di­vi­sion. With­in a year, the fifth grad­er again emerged the US top speed chess play­er, though this time win­ning in the high school di­vi­sion at the na­tion­als in Chica­go. Since 2007, Joshua has been the top rat­ed New York State chess play­er in his age group and in De­cem­ber 2009 he was named an All Amer­i­can by the US Chess Fed­er­a­tion. Last Jan­u­ary, Joshua scored an­oth­er no­table vic­to­ry com­pet­ing in the 9th Grade and Un­der sec­tion of the his­toric New York City Scholas­tic Chess Cham­pi­onships.

The young chess star al­ready has more than 300 tour­na­ments un­der his belt but, ac­cord­ing to his fa­ther, he is on­ly be­gin­ning his as­cent in the chess world. Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Raphael said it was quite pos­si­ble for Joshua to earn his IM norm at the Chess Car­ni­val which al­so of­fers Caribbean play­ers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­prove their FIDE rat­ing and even gain the Mas­ter norm with­out hav­ing to com­pete in tour­na­ments out­side the re­gion.