Ronaldo Rochester led the final group of three players into the 2026 Barbados National Open chess championships when he captured the FIDE rated section  of the Dr. Philip Corbin Open chess event, the final qualifier for the said championship, when it was completed recently at the Barbados Football Association headquarters.

Going into the final round 7 of games, Rochester with 5 ½ points, held a ½ point lead over Justin Kirton , who himself had a slight ½ point lead over Julissa Figueroa on 4 ½ points. At least 5 other players in the 28-player field had four points and with the right permutations of results still had a slight chance to qualify if they placed in the top three finishers.

In the final round, the three leaders would do enough to maintain these current postions as their final ones.
Rochester would draw with the black pieces against Charis Stuart while Figueroa and Kirton would battle to a draw also in their match.

With these results it meant that Rochester would win the event with 6 points, Kirton would finish second on 5 ½ points, while Figueroa would finish third with 5 points ahead of Loki Clarke and Aidan Singh on the tie-break. Clarke and Singh had defeated higher rated opponents in Mileke Sinckler and Adam Roachford to reach 5 points.

The first three finishers will now join the 6 already qualified players along with the defending champion Martyn Del-Castilho to contest the finals of the championship, starting on August 21 at the Fine Arts Gallery of the  Barbados Community College.
Figueroa, who incidentally is Del Castilho’s wife will be the only female player who has qualified for the National Open Championship in the last couple of years and will no doubt look to represent the females strongly.

In the novice section of the event, Kevin St. Hill won the event with an impressive 6 ½ points from his 7 games, while Tanish Chaturvedi was second on 6 points and Liam Martin third on 4 points.