A CHESS club at St Mary’s Primary School, Chepstow, ‘checkmated’ its opponents at a London tournament.

Fourteen members of the Chess Club competed in the London Chess Classic held at Olympia, London.

And in the first session, the team selected Kingsley Brown (Year Six) and Jacob Wynn (Year Five) to represent them in the live-feed matches.

The children were on the stage, with every move being watched on television and, in the short time available, both Kingsley and Jacob managed to checkmate their opponents and win their matches.

Every child played astonishingly well and won at least one game each. This is especially remarkable in the case of Daniel Jones who only joined Chess Club five weeks prior to the London Chess Classic.

After the lesson with Grandmaster Mike, he stopped Nicholette Flatman, the Chess Club’s coach to express how impressed he was with the children’s behaviour and politeness as well as their attentiveness when he was speaking.

The Chepstow team were extremely proud of their chess tournament achievements against the 400 pupils from 16 other schools.

The children won six individual medals with Luke Duffield achieving gold, Kingsley Brown and Jacob Wynn winning silver and Connor Watkins, Aiden Dempsey and Lewis Wynn each taking home a bronze medal.

Consequently the team scored 69 out of a possible 75 points, which placed St Mary’s in second place.

The success of the club has not gone unnoticed as five members were selected to represent Gwent at the annual South Wales & West of England Junior Jamboree, held at Chepstow Leisure Centre. Kingsley Brown (Year Six), Findlay Coleman (Year Six) and Jacob Wynn (Year Five) were part of the under-11 Team and Lewis Wynn (Year Four) and Luke Duffield (Year Four) were part of the under-nine team and all played extremely well against tough opposition.