World Youth Championships - 2008 - Vung Tau Vietnam

So another edition of the World Youth Championships has ended. By all accounts it was a magnificent success with the organizers, volunteers, staff, the Vietnamese government and local authorities all combining to make this a magnificent event.

Special mention must be made of the collaboration between various internet news organizations such as Chessdom, ChessAsia, and Vietnamese Chess. There was even a daily blog. All of these combined to provide excellent coverage and exposure for this event. After all, Chess is made for the internet technology.

I am sure that the players will remember this experience for the rest of their lives, from the competitive chess, to the talent evening to the power failure and leaking roof. In the end they will all be enriched.

All the games for our African players have been loaded and are available by country and age group with each players score card on the games link.

From a player perspective their are numerous highlights, and some disappointments, but overall the players performed more or less as expected. Lack of experience at this level is obviously still a stumbling block. However, it is encouraging to see that some National Federations are sending players to other tournaments and competitions as well. In addition, the ones sending teams to the Championships seem to be increasing the squad sizes. One hopes that the current financial crisis will not have a major impact on this trend.

Performances worth highlighting are:

Daniel Barrish from South Africa who finished on 6.5 points in the boys under 8 section. This after losing his first 2 games.

Current African Ladies Champion WGM Mona Khaled from Egypt who finished in the top 10 in the girls under 14 section with 7.5 points. She is clearly one to watch for the future.

And the enigma Anant Dole from South Africa who got to 6 points in the boys under 16 section. Anant started by getting 2.5 in the first 3 rounds and then proceeded to lose 3 in a row before picking it up again. Who knows what transpired but I feel that Anant could so easily have picked up an additional 1.5 points?