Congratulations to Nottinghamshire Under 11s team who have qualified for the EPSCA Major Finals.
A good day of chess at the Midland Zone of the Inter County Championships Midland Qualifier, with lots of positives, despite finishing fourth.
Some individual performances should be praised. Benedict and Aarush scored 2.5 points. Albert impressed with 2 points playing on the top board.
A big thank you to the parents who helped on the day and for transporting them to Loughborough.
The team will now play in the Major Finals on Saturday 14th March. Venue to be confirmed.
Our final placement in fourth was attributable entirely to the flawed pairing system where over the four rounds each of the six teams missed out on playing one county.
Warwickshire B had a huge advantage not having to face second seeds Leicestershire. We beat Warwickshire B 7-5; lost to Warwickshire A 1-11, as did Warwickshire B; both played Shropshire (Warwickshire B getting 0-5 points more than us) but in the last round we lost to Leicestershire whilst Warwickshire B beat Staffordshire.
Full results can be found on Chess-Results.com.
Something similar to our experience in Loughborough today happened in the East Zone where Essex occupied second and third places: Chess-Results.com.
Manchester B also narrowly failed to finish third: Chess-Results.com.
So it’s not just Nottinghamshire that lost out to a B team – Hillingdon and Ealing A are in the same position.
EPSCA AGM had ruled in 2024 at their AGM that B teams couldn’t qualify for the Major Final.
So we can look forward to playing in the Major Finals on Saturday 14th March.
~ Ed Jones