The Pan American Junior Chess Championship is an annual chess tournament open to players in the Americas who are under 20 years of age. The tournament has been held since 1974 with occasional interruptions. Beginning in 1995, a separate championship for girls has been held concurrently with the open championship.
The reigning champion is Annie Wang, who was the first girl to win any of the gender-unrestricted continental under-20 championships.
The championships are organized by national federations affiliated with the Confederation of Chess for America (CCA). They are open to chess players who are under 20 years of age as of 1 January of the year in which the championship is held. [1] The tournament format has varied over the years depending on the number of participants; since 2004, the open championship has been a nine-round Swiss-system tournament. [2]
The winners of the open and girls' championships earn the right to participate in the next year's World Junior Chess Championships. [3] In the open championship, the top three players after tiebreaks all earn the International Master title, while the first-placed player additionally earns a norm towards the Grandmaster title. In the girls' championship, the top three players after tiebreaks all earn the Woman International Master title, while the first-placed player additionally earns a norm towards the Woman Grandmaster title. [4]
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Ray Robson is an American chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 2010. Robson fulfilled the requirements for the title in 2009 at the age of 14 years, 11 months and 16 days, making him the youngest ever United States Grandmaster at the time.
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Artyom Timofeev is a Russian chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster by FIDE in 2003. Timofeev was born in Kazan. He, Zahar Efimenko and Andrei Volokitin tied for first place in the Under 14 section of the World Youth Chess Championships in 1999; Timofeev finished second on tiebreak. The next year, he won the Under 18 division of the European Youth Chess Championships.
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Sulennis Piña Vega is a Cuban chess player holding the FIDE title of Woman Grandmaster (WGM). She won the American Continental Women's Championship in 2001 and 2005. These two victories qualified her to play in the Women's World Chess Championship in 2001 and 2006 respectively. She was knocked out in the first round by Xu Yuanyuan in the former and by Ekaterina Kovalevskaya in the latter. Also in 2006, Piña Vega won the Pan American Women's Championship in San Salvador.
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Nicolas de T. Checa is an American chess player who holds the FIDE title of Grandmaster (GM). He is from Dobbs Ferry, New York. A chess prodigy, he began playing competitive chess at age 7. He is the recipient of the 2020 and 2021 Samford Fellowships, an award granted to the top American chess players under 25 years old. He is the 2021 and 2022 Connecticut State Champion and an undergraduate student at Yale University.
The Pan American Team Chess Championship is an international team chess tournament open to national federations affiliated to FIDE in the Americas. It is organized by the Confederation of Chess for America (CCA), and the winner qualifies to participate at the next World Team Chess Championship.
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The Asian Junior Chess Championship is an annual chess tournament open to players in Asia and Oceania who are under 20 years of age. The tournament has been held annually since 1977 with occasional interruptions. Since 1985, a separate Asian championship for girls has also been organized. Since at least 1996, the two championships have always been held concurrently.
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