Teaching chess in Oxfordshire schools with CSC

The charity Chess in Schools and Communities (CSC) is currently recruiting new tutors to teach chess to school children in the Oxford area. There has been a significant amount of interest from local schools in our classroom teaching in primary schools and in after school chess clubs recently and we expect this to expand further again next academic year.

You do not have to be a brilliant chess player as most of the lessons are at beginner level. If you enjoy teaching, have some knowledge of chess and are interested in committing to some hours in the afternoon on one or more days each week during school term time, we would be very interested to hear from you. Please take a look at the CSC website for further information about the charity and fill in the application form if you would like to apply.

There is a one-day initial training day in Yarnton on Friday 29 April. If you would like to know a bit more about what is involved in the training and other requirements, how the lessons themselves work, remittance and such like please also feel free to contact me (see contact pages).

Andrew Varney
Regional Organiser (Oxfordshire)
Chess in Schools and Communities

Oxfordshire Junior Chess Championships 2021-2022

The championships were held over the weekend of 8th / 9th January 2022 
at Cumnor C of E Primary School.  

The 2021-2022 Oxfordshire Junior Chess Champions are: 

Under 18	Alex Hertog, Kenneth Hobson, Dimitrios Zakarian
Under 15	Alex Hertog, Kenneth Hobson, Dimitrios Zakarian
Under 13	Alex Hertog, Kenneth Hobson
Under 11	Jan Murawski
Under 9	        Aden Kennedy 

Congratulations to the champions and to those who have subsequently been 
selected to represent Oxfordshire Juniors in the forthcoming EPSCA 
(English Primary Schools Chess Association) U9 and U11 competitions. 

Full results (cross-tables) can be found by following the links below.
A schools competition is also run as part of the tournament.  Subject to 
not being allowed to win the prize two occasions in a row, the top-
scoring schools (top scores from top 4 individuals count) in primary and 
secondary sections are awarded an engraved chess clock.  The top schools 
this year were: 

Position	Primary School	 Points
1st	        St Joseph's*	 15.5
2nd	        MCS	         15 (prize winner)
3rd	        OHS        	 12.5


Position	Secondary School     Points
1st	        MCS	             15.5 (prize winner)
2nd	        Cheney	             14
3rd	        Cherwell* / OHS	     8
* 2020 prize winner

Thank you to the organisers, arbiters and Cumnor Primary School for 
enabling the tournament to happen after an absence the previous year due 
to covid-19.  Thank you to all players for participating and parents for 
supporting. 

Under 9 

Under 11 

Under 13/15/18 


				

Ojays wins in Junior 4NCL

Oxfordshire Junior teams recently won both the 4th season online Junior 4NCL in Division 1 and the Over the Board weekend in September.

Out of all 4 divisions, Oxfordshire fielded 6 teams out of the more 150 taking part. Division 1 of the online competition consisted of 32 teams in 4 groups.
Ojays A beat Ojays B by 5.5-2.5 at the semi-final stage and went on to win the final by the same score.

Ojays A also won convincingly in Division 1 when J4NCL returned to OTB in September: J4NCL Division 1 Weekend 1

British Junior Champions 2021-22

The recent in-person British Junior Championships has seen Oxfordshire Juniors take titles in two sections:
Jan Murawski - British Under 10 champion;
Kenneth Hobson - British Under 12 champion.

Oxfordshire Juniors came close in both the Under 16 and Under 14 sections as well, with Adam Sieczowski as runner-up in the former and Dimitrios Zakarian in fourth place in the latter. Congratulations to all for excellent performances.

Oxon Juniors online success

While over the board junior team competitions have not been possible, 
EPSCA and SCCU have run online equivalents of the usual Jamborees on 
lichess.org. They had an interesting format of Swiss competitions on 
each board as instead of three rounds only, it was possible to extend 
the event to five rapid rounds.

Oxfordshire Juniors took part in all events with EPSCA taking place in 
March (Girls U11), April (U9) and May (U11) and the SCCU Jamboree for 
older players (U14 Minor/ U14 / U18) in June. 

In the jamboree on 5 June 2021, the Oxfordshire U18 team won the 
event, taking first place. Congratulations to the team! 

All players enjoyed the events. 
Team managers: Joseph Conlon (U9), Ola Murawska (all other teams)

ECF runs two county Blitz team battles for Juniors every month (one is 
specifically for girls). If any Oxfordshire junior players would like 
to take part in those please see the links at the equivalent news item 
at the Ojays website.