Four of the seven tournaments in the 2008-2009 Denver Scholastic Chess Series have been completed, with more than 265 children participating in at least one of the events.

The three remaining tournaments are Saturday and March 21 and April 11.

The Unrated Divisions are appropriate for children who have limited tournament experience and are in the beginning stages of their chess careers.

After doing well in the Unrated Divisions, they are ready to move up into Rated Divisions, where they are required to join the United States Chess Federation and compete with the experienced players.

Here are the leaders through four events in the series (find overall standings and information about the series at ColoradoMasterChess.com):

* K-3 Unrated Division: Weston Metzler, Rhett Fruitman, Amber Smith, Jordan Scott and Jose Reyes.

* 4-6 Unrated Division: Nathan Smith, Michael Beshear, Brodie Schmidt, Alessandro Piras, Stefan Kowalik and David Leede.

* 7-9 Unrated Division: Matt Lauren, Aaron Gunzner and Karthik Ravichandran.

* K-3 Rated Division: Zhou Ming Sun, Arvin Bilegsaikhan, Peter Allgeier, Mitchell Watkins and Max Chambers.

* 4-6 Rated Division: Nathanael Kamer, Jacob Schafer, Javier Hollines, Matthew Lomas, Rebecca Isacoff, Luke Stephens and Cory Kohler.

* 7-12 Rated Division: Amrita Nag, Alexander Yu, Ryan Swerdlin, Losol Amarbayasgalan and Dave Bitzko.

Todd Bardwick is a National Chess Master and can be reached through his Web site at www.ColoradoMasterChess.com

In the chart, can you find the winning combination for White from this game played in the second tournament of the series, from the 7-12th-grade-rated division?

White played, 44.Rh1+! Rh3 45.Rxh3 Kxh3 46.Nf4+ forking the king and rook. White went on to win the game in 12 more moves.

The 2009 Colorado State Scholastic Championships is a rated-only tournament and will be held February 21-22 at the Tivoli.