The list of registered players counted 46 for the Hong Kong Chess Championship 2013 Preliminaries. Round 1: Monday 28 January.
Alberto Muniz Pardino - Sportmanship
Last year’s top players, Hong Ki Tsang, Andrew Koenigsberg, Bryan Lee and Alberto Muniz Pardino were pre-qualified for the Finals. Alberto, however, opted out of his right to pre-qualify and he will play again, all the way from the bottom. That mindset we appreciate! With already so little play in Hong Kong, missing out 9 games of chess in these preliminaries seems a waste of an opportunity. Alberto has a true chess heart. And he runs (or ran?) Marathons …
By the way, ‘all the way from the bottom’, doesn’t mean a walk in the park. With Brian Dew, Luen-Wah Luk and Chak Man Chan we have three masters participating.
Also, 19 of the 46 players are rated and of the non-rated players there are a some strong performers from various tournaments held last year, including some talented youth players.
From Caissa we have Peter Whalley, Hannah Ball and David Garceran Nieuwenburg participating who together with Jean-Sebastien Bret will be tasked to defend Discovery Bay’s honor.
We’ll do our best.
