Cave stamps his class on local chess board

CHRISTO Cave reinforced his supremacy over the Trinidad and Tobago chess world by winning the recent National Open Swiss tournament in convincing fashion.

Cave finished the final chess contest for the year with six and a half points, a full point ahead of second placed veteran Cecil Lee. Cesar Ramos was third with five points. The tournament, which was played at the office of Rhand Credit Union in Port-of-Spain was partly sponsored by the National Gas Company.

The seven round Swiss ended on Saturday. Cave, who has won the National Chess Championship a record 11 times, retained that crown this year by winning both the preliminaries and the finals in which he had a perfect score of 11 out of 11 rounds. He ended 2003 with three major victories, including the Knights Chess Club Open tournament. At the presentation after the final round on Saturday, Cave received his first prize of $1,200 from Hungarian Chess Master Laszlo Somlai who is married to a Trinidadian and is now spending his vacation in TT.

Also in TT is another International Master, Martin Neubauer, who is on a coaching assignment partly sponsored by the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs. Among those receiving pizes were Brian Valentine and Joseph Caesar for the best performance in the Under-1800 category and Kitano Thomas for the best Junior performance. President of the TT Chess Association Bisham Soondarsingh thanked the National Gas Company for sponsoring the tournament and the Rhand Credit Union for providing a venue free of charge.

First chess tournament in the new year will be a Semi-International contest over three days, January 2, 3 and 4 in which the two visiting masters will play. The National Junior Swiss Open Tournament takes place on Saturday and Sunday at the YMCA, Wrightson Road, starting at 9.30 am. At this tournament, junior players will be given a national rating.