Caissa Hong Kong Chess Club

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Monthly Archives: January 2013

Hong Kong Chess Championship 2013 Preliminaries Round 1

January 29th, 2013

On Monday, 28 January, the first round of the Preliminaries was scheduled to start at 6:30pm but an overwhelming interest in the last moments took the organizers by surprise.

The good news for Hong Kong chess was obviously that more people had come than expected (read: timely registered), whereas the bad news was that allowing all these people to join would exceed the Fire Ordinance maximum.

Next time, register timely so the organizers can look into sourcing additional locations in time.

Full House at Hong Kong Chess Championship 2013 Preliminaries Round 1

With 49 players then, round 1 started at 7pm, with some noteworthy bits and pieces:

  • With Javier Martin Perez from Spain we have another Fide Master participating …
  • Youth player Benjamin Oh defeated 1963 Fide rated Sigappi Kannappan
  • Hysan Wong held a draw against Candidate Master Chak Man Chan
  • Caissa’s pride, Peter Whalley, caused another casualty at master level by drawing against Fide Master Brian Dew who with a Fide rating of 2226 is the highest rated participant
  • Caissa’s female pride Hannah Ball won her game against Brian Wong convincingly
  • ‘Almost-Caissa member’ from Discovery Bay, Jean-Sebastien Bret, could not hold the game against the typical Chor Yuen Chong style of gradually accumulating small advantages
  • Caissa’s David Garceran Nieuwenburg won against Jefferson Lee in a hard-fought Sokolsky in which Jefferson lost a piece in the endgame by exchanging rooks in the wrong order

After round 1 the ranking is as follows:

 

Results and Rank after Round 1

Inter-School Chess 2013 Preparations Discovery College Started

January 27th, 2013

In preparation for the 24 February 2013 Hong Kong inter-school chess tournament the Primary squad of Discovery College has started meeting up on Sundays at Discovery College and Thursdays at Caissa.

The venue at Caissa turned out to be a bit too small to accommodate an additional group of 10+ students (on coming Thursdays we will have an extra room) but the school venue was perfect to slowly get the students in shape.

Suneh ready awaiting his opponent's return. Background Hyun Jun practices with Miguel Angel and Kian stands to reach the pieces on Chor Wei's side

 

Meijing and Max look relaxed but the board is on fire. Bryant and Wilson in the background.

Hong Kong Chess Championship 2013 Preliminaries – Participant List Published

January 25th, 2013

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.

Discovery Bay Getting ready for the Hong Kong Inter-School Chess Championship

January 23rd, 2013

Being the local chess club, Caissa obviously has quite a lot of players who go to one of the two Discovery Bay  international schools, Discovery College or Discovery Bay International School.

Like last year with this tournament, as well as with with the ESF Quarry Bay School organized Primary Championship, Caissa will be facilitating some training for the Discovery College players in the coming weeks.

Last year Discovery College participated just with 1 team and it was a tough ride, but with 3 wins, 1 draw and 3 losses, the team ended decently on 32nd place in this strong tournament.

This year we have already 16 players registered to participate and Discovery College is about to arrive with 4 teams in the Primary section!

Of course we also hope DBIS will be assembling a team – from Caissa we wish them just as much success.

In any case, for the fledgling Discovery Bay chess community we already have something achieved by coming in with 4, 5 or hopefully 6 times as many students than came in from Discovery Bay last year. That prize is already ours …

Tournaments in the Pipeline and some Reorganization Plans

January 16th, 2013

January is moving well ahead. The first two meetings in January were slow starting with 8 and 15 players showing up on the 3rd and 10th respectively, but that will soon pick up. As practice is needed for the coming tournaments!

Group A Gathering around Club Coach Hannah Ball for the Latest Tips

A glance at the chess calendar shows we have the first tournaments in Hong Kong and nearby areas coming up soon.

The HKCF Hong Kong Chess Preliminaries will start on 28 January running 9 Monday evenings into April 8.  For the juniors HKCF have the Hong Kong Inter-School Championship coming up on 23 and 24 February. Also for youth, the Hong Kong Chess Association March Challengers Tournament is scheduled for 9 and 10 March. All highly recommendable events.

Caissa, supported by HKCF, is also working together with Macao to hold the traditional Interport match between the two cities on 2 March in Discovery Bay.

Until end of March, plus or minus one tournament, that’s all for Hong Kong. This in sharp contrast with Singapore where the Singapore Chess Federation is organizing 11 events (standard, rapid, blitz, transfer) in the same period of which 6 are Open and even FIDE rated. Their impressive calendar  runs all the way until end of this year with well over 40 events – again, most are FIDE rated. If a weekend trip to somewhere in this area is on the top of your list anyway, combining it with a tournament in Singapore will be good to boost chess skills.

Or a weekend in Bangkok for the BCC Checkmate Open 2013 on 2 and 3 February could be interesting to polish chess skills and enjoy the delicious Thai food.

Talking about chess skills, Caissa has grown in half a year on Thursdays from 5 to over 25 youth players, of varying levels of skills and noise … Mostly we have therefore nowadays two coaches on Thursdays, but with such a large group it is still challenging to divide the group into manageable sub groups for players to be paired with peers and guided according to their playing levels.

The club will be reorganizing the Thursdays and is planning to add the Saturday and possibly other days. The reorganization will be around dividing players specifically in groups A, B and C, with group A comprising the advanced players and group C the most beginning players. We will also form a squad which will consist of players who are very ready and willing for tournament play and representing the club in, for example, international team events. Participation in such events will be full sponsored by the club, including travel and lodging if required.

We aim to have the reorganization finalized from April and we will keep you posted about further progress.

Caissa Youth Take Home Prizes from Overseas Tournaments

January 2nd, 2013

17-21 December

The 29th Singapore National Open Championship took place in the week before Christmas. In the 9th and last round Miguel Angel Garceran Wang, in the Open Under 8 Category, unfortunately lost his game and consequently could not gain a top position but ended with 6 points on the 9th place.

Miguel Angel Garceran Wang (2nd from right) 9th Prize in 29th Singapore National Chess 2012

However, some of Miguel Angel’s games were very convincing, a prelude of what was to come in following 2 weeks.

Mei Jing Garceran Wang (4th from left) 6th Prize in 29th Singapore National Chess 2012

In the Girls Under 8 Category Mei Jing Garceran Wang started well with 4 points out of 4 games but ended after 9 rounds with 5 points on the 6th place and a nice trophy.

Mei Jing Celebrating Her First Overseas Prize

28 December

A city renowned in the Netherlands for strong youth players is Rotterdam of which the adjacent small town Capelle aan den IJssel  once had a strong youth section conquering titles in Dutch national championships. And still now in 2012 the prestigious Open Capels Jeugdschaak Kampioenschap attracts good and promising youth players.

In the Open Category D (Under 10 years) both Miguel Angel and Mei Jing participated. Mei Jing scored 4 points and ended 16th but Miguel Angel was crowned Champion Under 10 years with the very impressive score of 10.5 out of 11 games. Well done!

 

It is very clear that such a small country like Holland, ending 6th in the latest Chess Olympiad in Istanbul, just behind some former USSR states, China and the USA, knows how to organize and attract young players. It is difficult to exactly describe how or why this “child friendly atmosphere generating” youth tournament differs from the “clinical and no-nonsense atmosphere” in youth tournaments held in this part of the world; but it could well be a contributing factor in keeping youth players interested even after they turn 14 years old – the moment in various places in this part of the world chess participation collapses.

02 January

Chess club Tornado, in the Dutch small town Druten held its regional IJSCO “jeugd schaaknacht” (youth chess night) on 2 January 2013 that attracted over 80 participants from around the region of East Holland. Again, in an ambiance attractive to and motivating for children, Miguel Angel (7 points out of 7 games in group H) and Mei Jing (5 points in group J) won 1st and 3rd prize respectively after a night of hard work (final ranking).

Miguel Angel Garceran Wang Overcoming Opponents of Different Size and Age

 

Meijing Garceran Wang Awaiting Her Prize

It is good to see that Caissa youth is internationally competitive and it is highly recommendable to play chess in different settings. In 2013 Caissa will aim to coordinate participation in overseas or international tournaments for a larger group of Caissa youth.

Stay tuned.