Carl Ja­cobs

It was a mem­o­rable year for eight-year-old chess play­er Ray­den Ram­per­sad.

The Un­der-8 na­tion­al cham­pi­on added lus­tre to his name not on­ly by the breadth of his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sport but, more im­pres­sive­ly, by the records that he has set at his lev­el of the game.

To be­gin with, Ray­den emerged the Un­der-8 ab­solute Na­tion­al Ju­nior Cham­pi­on and, in do­ing so, he earned a FIDE rat­ing of 1448, be­com­ing the youngest play­er in the coun­try with such a dis­tinc­tion.

In Au­gust he set an­oth­er in­deli­ble record in the Un­der-8 sec­tion of the CAC Youth Chess Fes­ti­val held in Trinidad, gain­ing the ti­tle of Can­di­date Mas­ter, the youngest ever T&T ches­sist to gain such sta­tus.

At the same time he won a sil­ver medal for plac­ing sec­ond over­all on the tie-break.

For his age, young Ram­per­sad has shown an enor­mous ap­petite for the roy­al game, play­ing in tour­na­ments at home and abroad.

The rea­son for this, no doubt, is the coach­ing and com­pet­i­tive spir­it he has ex­pe­ri­enced as a mem­ber of the GMPS Chess Club run by David Mar­tin, for­mer Pres­i­dent of the T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion.

At the Caribbean Chess Car­ni­val held at the Queen's Park Oval, Ray­den again dis­tin­guished him­self plac­ing sec­ond in the Un­der 10 cat­e­go­ry.

He was al­so able to hold his own in the rapid-play are­na, tak­ing sev­enth place in the Un­der 12 sec­tion of the AIB tour­na­ment, sixth spot in the same cat­e­go­ry of the In­di­an Ar­rival Day One-Day con­test, sixth again in the First Flight Air Am­bu­lance In­vi­ta­tion­al One Day Rapid Play and fifth in the Cen­tral Vikings One Day event.

In most of these con­tests he played in cat­e­gories high­er than his own and had to meet a num­ber of stronger play­ers. He was back in win­ner's row in the Pal­adins Pri­ma­ry School In­di­vid­ual Com­pe­ti­tion, play­ing in the Un­der 10 group.

In his so­journs abroad, rep­re­sent­ing T&T, Ray­den al­so en­joyed good re­sults.

He placed 15th among 52 play­ers in the Un­der 8 class of the Pan Am Youth Tour­na­ment and sev­enth over­all among the Un­der 8s in the Carif­ta Youth Con­test. Al­though the young­ster failed to get the Play­er of the Year nom­i­na­tion from a se­lec­tion com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by the T&TCA, Ray­den should be pleased with his per­for­mance at home and abroad.

He has set records in the sport that will re­main on the his­to­ry books for­ev­er, records that should mark not on­ly his youth­ful tal­ent but al­so as a fu­ture na­tion­al cham­pi­on of T&T. How­ev­er, David Mar­tin, coach of the GMPS Chess Club, ad­mits frankly that he lacks the ex­per­tise to take his charges be­yond the 1600 lev­el and cer­tain­ly not in the IM class.

"The sport as a whole is sti­fled by the lack of high­er lev­el train­ing," he not­ed.

"That is the rea­son why our out­stand­ing play­ers pre­fer to pur­sue high­er lev­el ed­u­ca­tion than con­tin­ue their chess ca­reers."

Most like­ly that is the course that Ray­den would take, he added. Now, how­ev­er, the young­ster is a mod­el mem­ber of the GMPS club even as­sist­ing him in teach­ing new­com­ers in the fun­da­men­tals of the game.

"Chess is Ray­den's first love," says Mar­tin.

"He has an enor­mous po­ten­tial for the sport with a bright fu­ture in it, but I think he will even­tu­al­ly have to fol­low the pat­tern set by oth­er out­stand­ing play­ers."