As this competition takes place over just 7 rounds, the 6th round last Monday turned into an evening with impact. To start with, Caissa’s David Garceran Nieuwenburg with white could not get his rhythm into the game against Alberto Muniz. The queen’s pawn opening, responded to by black with 1 … g6, turned into a Sicilian which was a strong weapon enough in the hands of Alberto to hand David his first defeat.

L.W. Luk (FM), with white also, accumulated incremental positional advantages such that C.K. Yeung found his pieces too loosely coordinated to stop white’s victory. In the last round next week we have the pleasure of anticipating some fireworks between L.W. Luk and Alberto – the winner becoming the champion. A draw, however, still offers David G.N. and Sydney S.W. Lai perspectives to claim the title as well if they would win their games next week.

And Sydney is in hot steaming form, very fast on the clock and creatively aggressive, as Aravind Mahadevan experienced well last Monday, losing with the white pieces.

Brian Shin climbed up to 5th place by defeating Michael Yang and he will face David G.N. next week.

Billy Lo climbed up to 7th position by winning from Ian Scott; Ian’s first loss over the board. Seth Levine beat Jake C.L. Chan and next week we can expect another firework match between Seth and Billy.

It’ll be interesting next week.