Brentwood School Celebrates a Landmark Week of Competitive Chess

Brentwood School has concluded an extraordinary week of competitive chess, hosting three major tournaments alongside its regular schedule of eight weekly clubs for Prep and Senior School students. The week’s events showcased the growing popularity of the game, bringing together hundreds of players of all ages, backgrounds, and skill levels.

A busy chess week started on Sunday 8th March with the 10th Brentwood Junior Tournament. The event saw a record-breaking entry of over 140 players, making it the largest junior chess tournament held in Essex in recent years.

Competitors ranging from Reception to Year 13 were divided into five sections based on age and playing strength. Among the field were over 20 Brentwood students competing for the internal Brentwood School Chess Championship.

Congratulations to Max P (Year 11) who successfully retained the Senior School title and Joshua M (Year 6) who was crowned the new Prep School Champion.

On Tuesday 10th March, Brentwood hosted KEGS in the Essex Final of the English Chess Federation U19 School Championships. This six board standard play match was overseen by Mr Bowley and qualified arbiter Riley G (Year 12).

The Brentwood squad included Max (Year 11), Nina (Year 13), Anushka (Year 11), Aryan (Year 10), Chiza (Year 10) and Maadesh (Year 10). Despite Chiza drawing first (chess) blood, after two hours KEGS emerged the winners by 3.5 points to 2.5.

Congratulations to KEGS who advance directly to the National Final in June, while Brentwood will look to secure their spot through the Repechage tournament in April.

The week concluded on Friday, 13th March, with a dedicated Year 5 tournament held as part of the Brentwood School Year 5 Sports Tournament attended by a total of 17 local schools.

14 of those schools took part in an excellent morning’s chess and after 4 rounds of competition, St Aubyn’s took home the first-place trophy, with Brentwood Prep finishing in 4th-place.

Reflecting on the week, Head of Chess Robin Slade, said:

“Chess was the real winner of the week. The chess was played in excellent spirit throughout and showed once again the ability of the game to bring people together.

“Thank you to all the staff and students who helped out at the events, particularly our arbiters  Mr Bowley, Riley (Year 12) and Maadesh M (Year 10)”.