24th Yarm Team Chess Championships: Results

There will not be many chess tournaments anywhere in the world that can make it to 24 years and even fewer would have had the BBC's The One Show crew filming on the day. Yet both of these aspects became a reality at Yarm School yesterday.

Our latest tournament featured 30 teams - five more than last year - with a total of 120 children.

Tournaments do not appear out of thin air and it is important to acknowledge the help and hard work of numerous people who supported the event, from the children themselves to parents, teachers and the dedicated staff of Yarm School.

Weeks of frantic activity were also required to set up the filming, which included a day at Park End Primary one day before the tournament.

With so much pre-tournament preparation taking up copious amounts of time and energy it was a relief to finally begin the first round of the tournament - and to let the children demonstrate their growing skills over the chess board.

Five tough rounds later, it was time to present the trophies, medals, books and certificates.

Thank you to everyone who helped to make the tournament such a great success.

Tune in to The One Show this week (possibly Thursday but we are not yet sure of the day) and see if you can spot yourself!

Here are the results and a gallery will follow tomorrow.

Under-9s

1st: Yarm A, 14.5 points

2nd: Whale Hill A, 13.5

3rd: Whale Hill B, 9

8: Yarm C, Yarm B

7: Whale Hill C

Under-11s

1st: Yarm A, 19 points

2nd: Yarm B 14

3rd: Ings Farm A, 13

Westgarth B, 12

Westgarth A, Westgarth C, 11

Stockton Library A, Stockton Library B, Thornaby Library, Yarm C, Ings Farm B, all 10.5

Billingham South, Whale Hill A, 9

Park End, Broadway A, Yarm D, 8

Yarm E, 7.5

Whale Hill C, 6

Broadway B, 5

The Links, 4.5


Over-11s

The Over-11 teams were named after World Chess Champions.

1st: Steinitz, 14.5 points

Gautam Sathyamurthy, Michael Darcy and Luke Nargol

2nd: Capablanca, 13.5 

Crispin Roundtree, Yusuf Syed and Mohammed Sanaulla

3rd: Alekhine, 7.5 

Shrish Nair, Alice Sturman, Aishani Paul and Keya Shah


All photographs in this report are © Johannes Grundmann.