Barbados Juniors Dominate CARICOM Chess Podium After Five Rounds

Georgetown, Guyana —  Barbados’ rising chess stars are making waves at the 2025 CARICOM Classic Junior Chess Championships, with a commanding performance that sees three of its top players occupying the top three spots after five rounds of play.

National Under-16 Champion Noah Clarke, Under-14 Champion Aaron Jaikaran, and standout junior Mileke Sinckler have surged to the top of the individual standings, each with 4½ points out of a possible 5. Sinckler currently leads the pack, followed closely by Clarke and Jaikaran in second and third, respectively.

Clarke’s fifth-round victory was a tournament highlight, as he outmaneuvered top seed Ravish Ramesar of Suriname in a grueling 71-move battle on Board 1. Jaikaran and Sinckler also delivered decisive wins over Suriname’s Ky-Mani Wijnhard and Guyana’s Mahir Rajkumar, respectively, after drawing against each other in Round 4.

Under-10 Female Champion Sameera Jaikaran holds 2½ points and sits in 25th position. She drew her fourth-round match against Guyana’s 7th seed Alexander Zhang but fell in Round 5 to Nicholas Zhang, also of Guyana.

 

Team Barbados Climbs to Fourth in CARICOM Team Standings

Barbados also made significant strides in the team competition, moving into 4th place behind defending champions Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, and Suriname.

In Round 4, Barbados drew 2-2 with Guyana A, thanks to a crucial win by Leshay Springer on Board 4. Woman Candidate Master Chanon Reifer-Belle and Emar Edwards held their own with solid draws, while Kemp Lynch was edged out on Board 2.

Round 5 saw Barbados overpower Dominica 3½–½, with Edwards, Lynch, and Reifer-Belle all scoring victories. Springer added a half-point with a draw against Ayani Casimir.

Meanwhile, Trinidad & Tobago tightened their grip on the CARICOM Trophy with a 2½–1½ win over second-place Jamaica, following a 4–0 sweep of Guyana B in Round 4. The standings now show Trinidad & Tobago leading with 10 match points, Jamaica in second with 8, and Suriname in third with 8, but trailing on game points. Barbados sits just behind with 7 match points.

 

What’s Next?

In Round 6, Barbados faces Guyana Juniors in team play. The Junior individual competition features a thrilling all-Bajan clash at the top of the table as Jaikaran takes on Clarke. Sinckler will face Suriname’s Thie-Yen Fung, while Sameera Jaikaran is paired against Tharisha Montes de Oca of Guyana.

With momentum building and podium dreams within reach, Barbados’ juniors are proving that the future of Caribbean chess is bright—and Bajan.

Justin Kirton finished off the 2025 Kevin Denny Open chess tournament with an impressive victory over Cyprian La Touche to capture the event and lead a trio of players in qualifying for the 2025 Barbados National Open chess championship finals later this year. Kirton finished with a commendable 6 ½ points from his 7 matches.

The versatile Emar Edwards ground down the veteran Othneil Harewood in his final round game to finish in second place with 6 points and follow Kirton into the finals.

However, the fireworks occurred in the table three match where the current Under 16 champion Noah Clarke battled against the current Under 11 champion, Jeremiah Farley. This was a battle to determine who would be the third-place finisher and who would acquire the final qualifying spot for the 2025 national finals from this event. It was a game that lasted over 4 hours and what seemed like a slight advantage for Clarke as he went into the endgame, eventually vanished under time pressure and it was the younger Farley who would clinch victory and become the youngest player to qualify for a national championship final. Thus Kirton, Edwards and Farley would qualify for the 2025 championship.

Other results in the round saw victories for Janiyah Browne, Alfred Sparman and Dominic Cadogan.

It was a memorable event played in the historic Main Guard of the Barbados Defense Force with historic memorabilia photos of the history of the Barbados armed surfaces.  Thus, it was only suitable that historic events would follow such as Jeremiah Farley becoming the youngest player to qualify for a national chess championship final, as well as Justin Kirton also clinching his first qualifying event.

This event is named after International master Kevin Denny, who was the first person in the English-speaking Caribbean to reach that title and also, he was a winner of the Barbados chess championship over a dozen times.

As the day to commemorate the workers was celebrated last Thursday, three players who had definitely put in their work over that past week, reaped success by capturing the master’s, the challenger’s and the novice section of the 2025 Heroes Day chess festival.

In the top master’s section, it was Cuban grandmaster Luis Aguero Jimenez who showed he was the class of the 6-player event, when he finished a point and a half ahead of international masters Angel Cordoba(Colombia) and Felix Ynojosa (Venezuela). Aguero showed the difference in the given chess titles when he played a deep game to defeat Cordoba in the last round. It was the game that would have decided the winner of the event as if Cordoba had won, he would have leaped frogged Aguero.  However, the grandmaster showed his class and duly won the game to seal the event. The highest placed Bajan in this section was international master Terry Farley who finished fourth.

In the challenger section of the event local player, candidate master Justin Parsons stormed to victory with 7 ½ points from 9 matches. By round 8, after defeating Adam Roachford, Parsons had already secured an outright victory , so his draw against Jeremiah Farley in the last round was only of academic importance.

There was a three-ways tie for second to fourth, with Dr. Philip Corbin placing second on the tie-break, ahead of Mileke Sinckler and Kemp Lynch. These players finished with 6 points. Dr. Corbin’s last round victory against Roachford pushed him out of the prizes.

Sinckler was the top placed finisher in the Under 1700 rating section, just ahead of Savion Little and Jeremiah Farley who both finished on 5 ½ points.

Derick Boyce of Queens College capped a memorable week when he took the novice section of the event with 8 points from his 9 games.

Darren Toppin finished in second place on 7 ½ points, ahead of Aidan Singh on 6 ½ points in third. Singh edged out Jefferson Farley on the tie-break as Jefferson also finished on 6 ½ points.

This year’s Heroes Day chess festival had roughly 50 players contesting in 3 sections and representing 6 countries.