Olga Levina qualifies for the Catalan Individual Age Group Championships

Olga Levina has qualified for the Catalan Individual Age Group Championships, to be held in Lloret starting March 28th, and has therefore earned one of the Catalan Federation's scholarships thanks to her excellent performance in the Girona Individual Championships. There, with 5 points out of 8 and only one loss—against the champion—she finished ninth overall in the under-12 category and was crowned Girona Under-12 Girls Champion.

This is the first time that Club d'Escacs Lloret has managed to qualify one of its players, so we are extremely satisfied with the performance of Olga and the rest of the club's players, who are improving day by day and are beginning to show results for the club's commitment to its youth academy.

Furthermore, the participation of players from Lloret in the Girona Provincial Championship has been very high in this edition, which has been held in the municipalities of Olot and Malgrat over four Saturday afternoons in January and February.

Interestingly, Lloret was just one player away from breaking the club's record for participants (13) and fielded three players in each of the under-10 to under-16 categories. Another very commendable performance came from Gael Puiggalí, who scored 4 out of 8 points in his debut and raised his initial Elo rating, something very few players are able to achieve in their first official tournament.

Mateo Piñeyro, Arnau Jiménez and Sara Planas also won Elo, and Gerard Garcia, Aleix del Hoyo, Timur Korotkov, Andrei Korotkov and Adrià Figueras made their debuts in the competition, with outstanding performances.

Finally, we would like to highlight the performances of Lev Shustov and Bastian Suazo. Lev, with 4.5 out of 8 points, finished sixth in the under-16 category and achieved a spectacular draw against the provincial champion, Liam Valle, who has a Catalan Elo rating of 2217. Bastian Suazo was also having a very good tournament (3/6 points), but unfortunately had to withdraw from the final round due to illness. He also achieved a very good draw against the eventual provincial champion, Rayan Presas, with an Elo rating of 1973.