The 12th annual CRYChess tournament was held on Friday 25th November 2016 at the Gulf Indian School (GIS), Fahaheel with the participation of 152 children.
This year’s event was sponsored by Dr. Hind Albahar in memory of her late brother Khaled Hamad Ahmad Albahar. We are also highly grateful to GIS for offering their premises for the second year, to enable FOCC in its mission to support Child Rights & You (CRY). The CRYchess tournament is organized by FOCC (Friends of CRY Club, Kuwait), and is open to all children, while they are at school and with no age limit.
All the participating children are placed in one of the 6 groups, based in the descending order of their age with a maximum 32 children in each group. The exact group numbers and placement of each participant is only known after all the registrations have been completed. The eldest child in any particular group is thus within 1 to 2 years of the youngest in the same group. Each group is supervised by an Arbiter. The Arbiters are volunteers, who have a good chess playing background, and have offered their services for the cause. FOCC thanks all Arbiters for their continued support and time.
For each group, participant's names are entered in the Swiss-Pairing software, where pairing is done by the software in a random order. Each participant plays all the five rounds and the results for each round are entered in the program. The program does the pairing for the next round based on the results of previous round. After the 5th round technically, only one person would be placed 1st rank, provided he has won all the 5 rounds. In case no one wins all the 5 rounds, children with 4 wins are listed in the order of their round wise wins. Depending on the ratings of the opponents defeated, the software gives a clear ranking to all players. This is NOT a knockout system. Thus even after losing any one game, a child could still hope to be a winner in his group, based on the ranking. There were 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophies to be won in each group. The youngest participant of the tournament, as always received a special award.
The children were once again reminded that "With CRY, everybody is a winner". Their presence here is to have a fun filled day but at the same time not to forget the purpose - which is to support CRY in its mission to help the under-privileged children back in India, to regain their rights as children, which include right to survival, protection, development and participation.
The winners in each group were (in the order – first, second and third place):
White Opal (youngest) Group : Smit Sheetalkumar Kubal, Aaron Sanju Thomas, Mathew George;
Yellow Citrine Group : Kudaravalli Venkata Sree Harsha, Fraizner Fenil, Sanskar Mishra;
Blue Sapphire: Rohith Ram Raghupathy, Kaustuv Mohapatra, Tusharkant Anandan;
Red Ruby Group: Rushil Magazine, Denver Ferrer Machado, Pratik Baliarsingh Behera;
Green Emerald Group: Ebin Shibu Nanthalathu, Jonathan Vinay, K. S. Abhinaya;
Violet Amethyst (senior most) Group : Abhijoy Rajiv Mandal, Allen Thomas, Chillapalli Srisaisaketh
The special Youngest Player trophy was bagged two 5 year olds, Bryan Roshan Kuruvilla and Aadhvan Yadav. In addition to the winners, all the participants were awarded a medal and a certificate. All participating and non participating children were given a RASNA pouch packet which was sponsored by Hussein and Qaisar International Ltd. Congratulations to all the children. Thanks also to the parents for supporting their children and CRY.
Do visit our website www.focckwt.org for pictures of the event and all the rankings. We also invite all who want to volunteer and be part of FOCC and its activities.