College chess
Club report by David Zakarian
Oxford and District Chess League (ODCL) consists of four divisions in which in the season of 2011-2012
thirty teams from all around Oxfordshire participate. Players representing various communities and of
all ages take part in it. Susan Tawse enrolled a St Clare's team in Division 4 three years ago. In
this division the teams consist of 6 players, and all the teams have to play against each other twice –
one home and one away match.
In our debut season 2009-2010 St Clare's team scored one win and two draws with eleven losses occupying
the last place among eight teams.
In 2010-2011 there was a slight progress: we took the penultimate place this time scoring one win and
one draw with seven teams participating. The club employed the services of David Zakarian to assist with
team coaching.
In this year's division there are eight teams and our have already managed to beat the record of previous
years in having already scored two wins (against Wantage 2 and Cowley Workers with the scores 3.5-2.5 and
5.5-0.5 respectively), one draw (against Cowley 4 with the score 3-3) and with two losses (against Cumnor
and Witney 4 with the score 2.5-3.5 and 2-4 respectively). Currently our team is in the third place.
All the points have been scored due to excellent team work, but two players stand out: it is Shiri
Heffetz's fantastic 5 out of 5 (100%) and an absolute amateur – Arjaldo Karaj's 3.5 out of 5 (70%).
No member of the team is a professional player but some of them, i.e. the second year students, have acquired
some chess experience by playing in ODCL in previous seasons. This year, as usual, our team members are
both first and second year IB students.
The college provides two days of chess training: on Tuesdays all the current and potential members of the
team receive high-quality training in chess strategy, tactics, opening/middle-game/endgame preparation and
in many other areas; on Thursdays all the students of the college are free to attend, play chess games and
analyse with the coach and team members.
College team: Lev Bel'skiy, David Genis, Shiri Heffetz, Arjaldo Karaj, Ekaterina Karetko, Stepan Nazaretyan,
Benjamin Renhuldt, Yakiv Yaholnitser.
December
