After round 3 of the Hong Kong Open Chess Preliminaries only four players still remain with a 100 percent score. For such a relatively large group this is quite remarkable and it shows the strength and competitiveness being both wide and fierce this year. As next week the top 4 will play against one another, and consequently there will be at least another 50 percent reduction in ‘only-winners’, in the coming weeks we can expect ferocious play in a large pool of players who will all remain within reach of a top 9 finals qualifying position for the time being.

Caissa’s hopelessly-in-form-crisis David Garceran Nieuwenburg will likely not be in that pool anymore after Brian Wong converted David’s very early pawn loss flawlessly into a full point.

The other Caissa players Peter Whalley and Hannah Dale, however, are maneuvering themselves well into pole position. Peter held another Master, CM Chak Man Chan playing Alekhine, to a draw and remains unbeaten. Hannah evolved her French position into a middle game where here two rooks and queen threw their might on the open f, g and h files to topple the white castled king.

Interestingly, Billy Lo defeated the Spanish new-kid-in-town FM Javier Martin Perez and Robin Lai drew against FM Luen-Wah Luk.

Next week, in addition to the games played among the top 4, we can look forward to the confrontation of the two FMs Luen-Wah and Brian Dew and the game between FM Javier and Robin Lai who seems to be on track, in addition to being a Master in Chinese Chess, to reach that level in International Chess.

Interesting will also be the clash between generations when Peter and Hannah will meet their 12 years old opponents Hung Rey Leong and Michael Yang respectively.