Canterbury Junior Chess Sunday Series

ABOUT

Entry form is available here: Online form

The Canterbury Junior Chess Sunday Series is sponsored by chessventures and is a series of tournaments organised by the Canterbury Chess Club for school-aged juniors on the last Sunday of most months (if that would be a long weekend, it will move to the following Sunday). Players' dates of birth must be on or after 1 January 2007 to enter.

These tournaments are not suitable for beginners but will be useful for children as an introduction to tournament chess played with chess clocks and according to the official Laws of Chess - great preparation for interschool tournaments!

Venue

Canterbury Chess Club: 9/27 Tyne Street, Addington, Christchurch.

Plenty of offstreet parking is available.

Dates and Timetables

Dates for 2025

23 February, 30 March, 4 May, 25 May, 29 June, 27 July, 5 October, 2 November, 30 November. Also note the Canterbury Junior Chess Championships.

Timetable

Venue doors open at 12pm
Players meeting at approx. 12:45pm
Start at approx. 1pm
Prizegiving after round 6 (approx. 5pm but may be a bit earlier if players finish quickly or a bit later if they use all their time in every round)

Format

6 round Swiss with a time control of 15 min + 5 sec/move for each player using chess clocks.

Swiss pairings means players are paired against other players on the same score where possible without playing anyone twice. Players get 1 point for a win, 0 points for a loss and half a point each for a draw. Players will get 6 games unless there is an odd number in which case some players will get 5 games and a bye (no opponent, score 1 point).

Tournaments will be NZCF rapid-rated where possible (NZCF is the New Zealand Chess Federation).

Entry fee is $20.

Medals and certificates for the top 3 places, alongside books and other prizes are guaranteed. A spot prize is also drawn from players who are present at prizegiving. These tie-breaks will be used:

Direct Encounter
Buchholtz Cut 1
Buchholtz
Sonnenborn-Berger

The FIDE website has an explanation of how these are calculated here.

The Sunday Series also has two prizes of a voucher for 1 hour of Zoom coaching thanks to our sponsor, chessventures. These will be awarded to the top two players of the whole Sunday Series as calculated by a Grand Prix style system. There is also a trophy that is awarded to the top player each year. The top 5 players in each tournament will be awarded points as follows:

10 points
8 points
6 points
4 points
2 points

If a player scores points in more than 5 tournaments, the top 5 scores will be counted.

To enter: Please enter via the online form and pay the entry fee by online banking to the Canterbury Chess Club: 03-0802-0093915-001 - please include the player's name and 'Sunday Series' as the references. Players may enter more than one tournament at a time using the same form by selecting the relevant dates, in which case payment is $20 per event. To withdraw from 1 or more events, or correct or change details, please email Canterbury@chess.org.nz.

Please note entry is restricted to the first 31 paid entries.