?Carl Ja­cobs

Af­ter on­ly three years play­ing com­pet­i­tive chess, 11-year-old Joshua John­son has not on­ly emerged a lead­ing ju­nior but the young­ster is al­so mov­ing in­to the com­pa­ny of T&T's top se­nior play­ers. Two weeks ago, the Maria Regi­na Prepara­to­ry School stu­dent be­came the new Un­der-20 na­tion­al chess cham­pi­on and, a few weeks ear­li­er, he qual­i­fied to con­test the open na­tion­al cham­pi­onship fi­nals, tak­ing sec­ond place in the last pre­lim­i­nary con­test which was held in To­ba­go. At the na­tion­al Un­der-20 cham­pi­onships held at St Mary's Col­lege, John­son topped a field of 24 play­ers, fin­ish­ing the sev­en-round Swiss on six points with vic­to­ries over a num­ber of promi­nent and more ex­pe­ri­enced ju­niors, in­clud­ing Esan Wilt­shire, Jayson Paul and Van­dorf Smith.

In the fourth and fi­nal pre­lim­i­nary, he drew with fel­low qual­i­fi­er Alex Win­ter Roach and won against Hay­den Lee and Dev Soon­dars­ingh. John­son's chess skills be­gan to de­vel­op at Maria Regi­na, boost­ed by some ad­di­tion­al coach­ing from FM Ryan Harp­er. He owes a lot al­so to var­i­ous forms of train­ing he re­ceived from the com­put­er. Last year the young­ster be­gan to make his mark by bring­ing home the Un­der-10 gold medal from the CAC games in Pana­ma and win­ning the T&T Un­der-12 na­tion­al cham­pi­onship. Based on his suc­cess­ful re­sults in the SEA ex­ams, John­son en­ters Fa­ti­ma col­lege in Sep­tem­ber. He is the youngest of four ju­niors who will con­test the na­tion­al fi­nals lat­er this year. The group is led by 14-year-old FM Keron Cabralis who re­cent­ly be­came the first T&T chess play­er to en­ter the zon­al stage of the con­test for the world cham­pi­onship.

Cabralis who re­cent­ly added the pres­ti­gious Knights Open ti­tle to his bulging trea­sury of tro­phies and records, now faces two ma­jor chal­lenges be­fore the year's end; he goes for the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship a third time–hav­ing placed third twice–and will rep­re­sent T&T at the Olympiad in Rus­sia in Sep­tem­ber. By qual­i­fy­ing for the fi­nals a third con­sec­u­tive time, the St Mary's boy has again made chess his­to­ry. In fact, such has been his seem­ing­ly in­ex­orable progress in the sport that one must now won­der how far his love for the roy­al game will take him.

In a con­ver­sa­tion with Dou­ble Rooks last March, Cabralis said he want­ed to be­come T&T's youngest Fide Mas­ter. This was the dream he prompt­ly ful­filled at the sub-zon­als in Nas­sau a few weeks ago. So what's next for this young chess star? Two oth­er ju­niors, Vish­nu Singh, 14, of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, and Jayson Paul, 17, of Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, make up the four­some of young­sters who will bring their own brand of ex­cite­ment to the fi­nals, bat­tling with eight of the coun­try's lead­ing play­ers, in­clud­ing de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Mar­cus Joseph, in the quest for the 2010 open na­tion­al ti­tle.

Singh smashed his way in­to the fi­nals by a string of im­pres­sive vic­to­ries in the first of four pre­lim­i­nar­ies. He fin­ished the sev­en round con­test on 5.5 points, scor­ing wins against FM Ryan Harp­er, Alex Win­ter Roach, Hay­den Lee and Dar­ryl Davis. Af­ter his suc­cess in the SEA ex­am­i­na­tions in 2007, the Ch­agua­nas young­ster came quick­ly in­to promi­nence with­in the ju­nior ranks, win­ning the Un­der-14 cat­e­go­ry in the Or­chard Grand Prix in 2008 with a score of 13.5 points out of 15 and re­peat­ing the per­for­mance the fol­low­ing year. Singh pro­ceed­ed to ful­fil his ear­ly promise by win­ning the na­tion­al ju­nior ti­tle in fine ti­tle.

He made 2009 an even more mem­o­rable year by bring­ing home a bronze medal from the Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean Games in Pana­ma.

Jayson Paul, an Up­per Sixth stu­dent of Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, has not been as ac­tive on the chess tour­na­ment cir­cuit as the oth­er three ju­nior fi­nal­ists. How­ev­er, as a prod­uct of the T&T Chess Foun­da­tion train­ing pro­gramme, he has cer­tain­ly done enough to es­tab­lish his im­pres­sive chess skills. This, in fact, is his sec­ond ap­pear­ance in the fi­nals, a ma­jor achieve­ment fol­low­ing the Un­der-16 na­tion­al cham­pi­onship ti­tle he won in 2008 and his Un­der-20 first prize in the Or­chard Grand Prix the same year. This tal­ent­ed ju­nior four­some strike an op­ti­mistic note about the fu­ture of chess in T&T and promise to make this year's show­down for open na­tion­al ho­n­ours a very in­ter­est­ing af­fair.

They will match skills with a for­mi­da­ble galaxy of se­nior play­ers con­sist­ing of FM Ryan Harp­er and Rav­ishen Singh who will be seek­ing to re­gain the ti­tle; FM Mario Mer­ritt, per­haps the strongest play­er nev­er to win the cham­pi­onship; Dr Ed­di­son Chang, a con­sis­tent qual­i­fi­er; An­drew Bowles, a vet­er­an still play­ing at his best; David Christo­pher, a care­ful strate­gist and Alex Win­ter-Roach, ever a dan­ger­ous dark horse.

There re­mains, of course, the tough­est hur­dle of them all, young Mar­cus Joseph who will be de­fend­ing the ti­tle he won last year with the full force of his ma­tur­ing ar­moury. Dou­ble Rooks an­tic­i­pates a keen fi­nal con­test for T&T's pre­mier chess ti­tle filled with fight­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing games.