Scottish chess prodigy takes circuit by storm - age SIX
  • 5 years ago
A six-year-old schoolgirl is causing a sensation in the normally staid world of Scottish chess - by beating off much older competition to land two major titles in just a month. Little Carolina Espinosa Cancino, who has been playing chess since the age of two, likes nothing more than singing along to her favourite musical, Annie, or humming the Let It Go 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, last month won the 2016 Scottish Junior Chess Tournament. She competed in the under-nine section, and played for five gruelling hours before taking the title. Then, little more than a week later, she scooped another Scottish junior title at a championships held in Croy, Lanarkshire. Carolina, who is just three and a half feet tall and is towered over by many of her opponents, comes from a long line of chess champions and was taught by her father, entrepreneur Jose Miguel Espinosa. She is following in the footsteps of her older siblings, Miguel, 20, Cristina, 19, and Monica, 15, who are all already international chess players.