With Regis Sze joining in the U7 age category, and Sophie Whalley in the end not participating in the U13 age category, Caissa still had 8 members playing in the event in both the U10 and U7 age categories.

It was an exciting weekend with some surprises. To start with, U18 age group was won by Luke Lau with 6 out of 7 ahead of last year’s winner Christopher Masters who still remained in the top 5. Yee Chit Wong, last year’s champion of U13, and still young enough to play in that age category tried his luck in U18 and claimed a 3rd place with 5 points: impressively with 4 wins, 2 draws and no loss other than the first round loss which seems to be related to not having arrived on time. A strong performance also from Julian lee, who was number 11 U13 last year but this year claimed the 4th place.

The U13 age group was convincingly won with 7 out of 7 by Michael Yang who seems to be making strong progress, playing better also every Monday at the HKCF Queen Elizabeth Stadium competition.  The top seed of last year’s U10, Benjamin Oh and Issac Fung, as expected did well in U13 with Benjamin having an all or nothing last game against John Woo who finally claimed 2nd prize. Issac ended number 4 in good company of last year’s top players Jeffrey Lam and Adrian Chui in the top 5.

The U10 age group was convincingly won by James Kwong with 7 out of 7. Streaming in from U7 made little difference to James, nor to most other top players from U7 last year, like Ronald Choy and Peter Zhao who ended in top 6. Richard Takasumi, who did not lose a game but had to allow 2 draws, ended strongly on second place.

Looking at the top 5 it is so these players, unfortunately, mostly did not play against each other and perhaps for a group this large 9 rounds would have been a better reflection of this group’s talent: if there would have been a next round, according to the Swiss pairing system the top players would have surely met each other on the board.

Ruadhri Neville (right) from Caissa Is Ready!

From Caissa Ruaidhri Neville was the top player who kept his cool to collect a handsome amount of 4 points and ended on 34th place out of 84. Well done Ruaidhri!

Bryant Chong had a little dip in the middle part of the tournament but with  3.5 points, a good 50% score, still ended fine on 44th place.

Chor Wei Tang and Franz Herrmann, with 2.5 and 1.5 points respectively, had not yet experienced a tournament of this scale – and it is impressive to be with hundreds of players in a hall – and will surely be more ready for next event.

Regis (right) Delivered a Checkmate with White

In the U7 category the 3 players in the top 15 of last year, including Gerent Lee, Andy Au and Miguel Angel Garceran Wang all performed well scoring 5 points but the impressive winner with 7 wins was Ho Pang Huang who had come over from China to play – and how!

Caissa’s Aleesha Naqvi had a tough day on which everything that could go wrong, went wrong and she ended without a win. Regis Sze performed, on his second tournament, above average scoring 4.5 points ending on 9th place.

Mei Jing Garceran Wang, after winning the novice tournament recently, continued to play very well and had 4 points  after 6 rounds.   Her brother Miguel Angel also had 4 points and unfortunately they met each other in the last round, which was won by Miguel Angel.

Mei Jing against her brother Miguel Angel in round 7

Through his win Miguel Angel ended 4th and was the only Caissa member within reach of some silverware. Congratulations!

Six Prize Winners U7 (Miguel Angel 3rd from left) and Organizers & Guests (left to right back: Grand Master Meng Kong Wong, General Secretary FIDE Ignatius Long Chee Weng, FIDE Arbiter K.K. Cheng, HKCF Youth Tournament Director Ms. Ho Yin Ping and HKCF President Jackson Li)