IAPS Chess Champions

Players from Peponi House, Kenton College, Hillcrest, The Banda and Braeburn School gathered on an overcast Saturday morning to compete in the annual IAPS Chess Tournament, hosted in the High School hall at Braeburn.

Chess is a superb activity for children to pursue, with many benefits attributed to playing it, including:

• Development of concentration, patience and self-discipline
• Logical thinking, planning, problem-solving, categorising information and pattern recognition
• Improves visual memory and spatial-reasoning ability

Teams of 2 pupils in each of the Under 9, Under 11 and Under 13 age categories pitted their strategic minds against each other to apply their skills, experience and problem-solving. Some schools brought additional chess players who were invited to enjoy the opportunity of playing pupils from outside their schools, but who did not participate in the overall competition.

Engrossing games saw clever play from all the participants, in at times tense games, within an atmosphere of fair play and good sportsmanship.

All the players can be proud of their performances on the day. Gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded in each age category and Braeburn School emerged as the overall IAPS Chess Tournament champions for 2018.

Huge congratulations to our U9s, Ben and Kristian, our U11s, Queen and Mudit, and to our U13s, Kieran and Vishrut. They put in strong individual performances to contribute to the team's overall success.

Thank you to Mr Reydon, the chess tutor at Braeburn, and to the Kenya Chess Association for their valuable support of the event.