FOCC (Friends of CRY Club, Kuwait) organized the 17th annual CRYchess tournament at the Fahaheel Al-Wataniya Indian Private School (DPS), Ahmadi on 3 May. The event was sponsored by Talal & Lulwa Education Fund, supported by Dr. Hind Albahar, who has continuously provided support to the FOCC mission. Our sincere thanks also to FAIPS for providing us the school facilities to conduct the tournament.
Our mission of supporting deprived children back home is met through our allocated project ‘School the Spark’, which supports children in rural areas. The other face of our mission is to sensitize children in Kuwait on the main purpose behind participating in CRYchess.
CRYchess tournament is open to all school-going children in Kuwait, with no minimum age limit. The youngest player this year, John Jumalon Sotaridona was just 5 years and 9 months old. Thanks to all the participants and to the parents for supporting their children and CRY.
The Kid’s Corner, with exciting games and gifts kept the children busy between the rounds. The Corner was entirely run by the ‘CRYbuddies’, a group of children who have dedicated their time and efforts towards contributing towards the FOCC mission. Big thanks to all of them – Qaisarali Merchant, Insiya Patanwala, Tasneem Patanwala, Adnan Kutbuddin, Mohammed Dholkawala and Aliasgar Stationwala. All our arbiters and technical team, who have a good chess playing background are volunteers, offering their services for the cause. FOCC thanks all Arbiters for their continued support and time.
The participating children are placed in five age-based groups – maximum of 32 children in each group. Through the Swiss-Pairing software, the first round pairing is done in a random order. In every subsequent round, they are paired based on their ranking. Each participant plays all the five rounds. This is NOT a knockout system. Thus, even after losing any one game, a child could still hope to be a winner in his group, based on the ranking generated by the software. There were 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophies to be won in each group.
The winners in each group were (in the order – first, second and third place): White Opal Group (youngest) : Joseph Jumalon Sotaridona, Nitesh Vidyasagar and Mohnish Balamurughan; Blue Sapphire Group : Rose Sanju Thomas, Alen Shinu and Noel Jacab Joji; Red Ruby Group : Aaron Sanju Thomas, Smit Kubal and Roshanraj Balamurugan: Green Emerald Group : Ditto Ben Joseph, Krishna Chaitanya and Joshua Abraham Joseph; Violet Amethyst Group (senior-most) : Akshat Naik, Jonathan Vinay and Pratik Baliarsingh Behera.
All the participants are awarded a medal and a certificate. The round-wise results for all groups and the event pictures are published on our website www.focckuwait.org. Congratulations to all the children. As we say, “With CRY, everybody wins”.
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