Tournament honours dead teen chess prodigy
Last Updated: 12:30am GMT 12/01/2008
An international chess tournament has been set up in memory of a teenage chess prodigy who died in mysterious circumstances.
Top players from around the world are expected to attend the inaugural Jessica Gilbert Celebration International, held over 10 days in August at her club in Coulsdon, Surrey.
Miss Gilbert, 19, of Reigate, Surrey, died after plunging from the eighth-floor window of a hotel room in the Czech Republic in July 2006, where she had been playing in the Czech Open tournament.
Her mother, Angela Gilbert, 54, said: “It’s exciting because it’s going to be international and it will give people the opportunity to be playing at the level Jessica was.
“I will be going and I hope we’ll continue to be involved.
“We thought celebration rather than memorial, because we want to celebrate Jessie.”
Howard Curtis, of Miss Gilbert’s club, the Coulsdon Chess Fellowship, said her talent was obvious when she was aged eight. “Had she lived she would have been a household name,” he said.
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It’s nice that they honored her.