James Ratcliffe has entered the British Under 16 Championships being played as part of the annual British Congress, taking place at Coventry (University of Warwick) this week. It seems James is the only Crewe representative this year.
On Sunday, James started as 15th seed out of 27 in the U16 Blitz Event and performed extremely well to score 5/7 and finish joint 3rd. Results can be seen from the following link:
https://s2.chess-results.com/tnr1452121.aspx?SNode=S0
The main event for James is the main U16 Championships played over 7 rounds. James is ranked No 12 out of 33 here, in a field led by FM Max Pert. Rankings are based on FIDE ratings, with the top six all rated over 2000 (something the writer can only dream of) and another five rated over 1900. This shows the exceptional talent in the tournament, and when you consider most of these players have ECF ratings far in excess of the FIDE ratings used. James started well winning with the black pieces in Round 1, before facing the No 3 seed in round 2, losing after a valiant effort. Today’s round 3 game saw James find a neat finish after a piece sacrifice with black to win again. So after 3 rounds he trails the leaders (3 players on 3 pts, 1 on 2.5 pts) within a pack of 12 players on 2 points.
See link below for James’s win today and all other games at The British.
https://lichess.org/broadcast/2026-british-chess-championships-under-16/round-3/HCH490Yf/yNK16n9W
I understand that our youngest member Jasper Ludlow, is visiting the Congress and taking on board some training. It may not be long before Jasper is competing there as well
Good luck to James for the rest of the Championships