On Wednesday, 2nd April, 44 EIC students from Years 7 to 10 took part in the school's 2025 tournament.
Hector in Year 8 won the tournament undefeated with an impressive 6.5 points out of 7 games. In second place was Danny F (Year 8) with 6 points. In third place (on tie-breaks) with 5.5 points was Nikhil in Year 10. Below, you can find some of the highlights from the event and the final standings of the top 15 players.
The surprises began as early as the first round, with Nicole in Year 8 achieving a stalemate (draw) from a worse position against Jamie in Year 9. This demonstrates the power of resilience in chess and aligns nicely with our EIC theme of the year.
Stalemate: Black has no legal moves but is not in check. Draw.
Scholar's Mate, commonly known as the "four-move checkmate," was seen in various forms throughout the tournament. It occurred in at least 10 games, including in Round 4 in a slightly unusual form (5 moves!) between Danny and Chenhan.
The moves to reach this position were: 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Bc5 3. Nc3 d6 4. Qh5 Nf6?? A terrible mistake, missing White's threat: 5. Qxf7 checkmate!!
In Round 5, Neoh managed to win against one of the top seeds with a surprise checkmate. The combination of queen and knight is known to be particularly dangerous in attacking positions, as shown in the game.
The White king is checkmated by the combination of queen and knight.
A nice checkmate occurred in Round 4—my favourite of the whole event.
Knight d4 to f3 is checkmate. The bishop on c5 controls the f2 escape square for White’s king. There is no escape.
Here is a maths question: With 44 players each playing 7 rounds (no knockout system), how many games were played in total in the event?
Overall, great fun was had by all involved.
Big thanks to Miss Katia, our librarian, for all her help setting up the tournament and ensuring it ran smoothly. And a special thank you to Sebastian Santaella Amate of ChessAttitude for helping us run the event!
