Thursday 10 March 2016

This six-year-old chess whizz has already won two major adult titles!


Carolina Espinosa Cancino, from South Ayrshire, comes from a line of champions, with three older siblings who are international players. Already, she has began to attract interests by winning adult competitions to land two major titles in just a month. Little Carolina Espinosa Cancino has been playing since she was two and likes nothing more than singing along to her favourite musical, Annie or the soundtrack to Disney film Frozen. But when the chess board comes out she switches into junior master mode, leaving opponents more than three times her age trailing in her wake.
Carolina, a pupil at Sacred Heart Primary school in Girvan, South Ayrshire, has won the 2016 Scottish Junior Chess Tournament. She played for five gruelling hours before taking the title. Then, last week, she scooped another junior title at a championships held in Croy, Lanarkshire, beating adult players. Carolina comes from a long line of chess champions and was taught by her father, entrepreneur Jose Miguel Espinosa.
Carolina's proud mother Cristina, 49, said: "The practice of chess promotes values such as tolerance, critical thinking and self-esteem.
"Carolina knows that chess is a game of strategy that requires concentration of attention, memory, creativity, imagination, sense of responsibility and emotional control.
"Carolina knows that talent is 10% of the base and the remaining 90% is work."
She practises her chess for two hours every day during the week.

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