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Dark Knight / Le Chevalier Noir
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---- Nous avons besoin d'un traduction français!
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The 2025 World Youth Championships are being held in Albania. The tournament is 11 rounds and has 6 groups: Open and Girls in each of the U18, U16 and U14 age categories. Canada has 12 players in the tournament. I am mostly following the Open U18 section in which Aaron Reeve Mendes is representing Canada. Aaron has 2.5 points after 3 rounds. His first game was a win over a lower rated player and he has followed it up with a victory and a draw against 2 IMs rated around 2400. GM norms are unlikely since there are only 3 GMs in the event and you would need to get good pairings to play all 3 of them in the 11 round tournament, although a GM norm is given to the winner of the section. This is a long tournament and it will be interesting to see how the Canadian players handle the grind.
Our coach or captain for this tournament is someone who knows what it takes to win this section: Shawn Rodrigue-Lemieux. To have this kind of success will also require a bit of luck. Aaron Mendes will likely have a few more chances to win this section for a number of years after this one.
One thing that I have learned over the years is that we will be pleasantly surprised by some of the Canadian performances and often it will be by someone who we might not have expected because they caught fire at the right time.
Last edited by Vlad Drkulec; Monday, 6th October, 2025, 09:41 PM.
Two more draws for Aaron Mendes. Yesterday he drew against against an FM rated 2413 and today he drew against an IM rated 2451. It is good experience playing against people that are rated 100-150 points higher than he is and he gains 3-4 rating points from each draw. Aaron is now at 3.5 / 5, so he will have another challenging opponent tomorrow.
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