After James Kwong in Maribor, Miguel Angel and Mei Jing Garceran Wang in Halkidiki it is now Richard Takasumi, the 2012 Youth Blitz Champion of Caissa Discovery Bay and number 2 of Hong Kong Under 10, to represent Hong Kong in an international FIDE organized youth championship: the 14th ASEAN Age Group Championship.

 

 

The rapid and blitz tournaments on 6 and 7 June have wrapped up and the remainder of the tournament is standard play. An update mail from Richard’s father we interpret as Q&A as follows:

Q: How did Richard do in the rapid and blitz sections?

A: In the rapid (25 mins) and blitz Richie scored 4/7 and 5/9 respectively. Not bad in a decent field with around 10 players rated 1500+ and a lot more unrated players of similar strength.

Q: How does Richard feel participating in this tournament?

A: Richie is having a good time, in the first round of the blitz he was so excited that the clock and pieces were knocked over the board!

He is putting in a good effort in all his games and he is looking forward to the main event so he can take his time and think about his strategies more.

From the remainder of the update we understand that the venue and organization have been great. The only negative seems to be that Richard, being the only player from Hong Kong, is massively outmanned by the other teams.

We fully agree with Richard’s father that it would be great to do these events as a group. Time and again we find our Hong Kong youth in a disadvantaged and isolated position against players from national squads who are trained and prepped and even proudly clothed in country uniforms from their national federations.

In any case, even without any extra element of such support, Richard has shown some fireworks in several games, of which below is from rapid round 2: the board is completely on fire! No matter the result, we at Caissa are proud to see such fighter spirit representing Hong Kong.

 

 

After a slow warming up in the first 2 rounds of the standard chess main event Richard now has 2 out of 4. In the last game, with white against a Thai opponent playing Petroff’s defense, Richard’s combination of a 21. right-hook h4, 22. left hook Na4 and 24. uppercut sacrifice Re6x was too much for black to take. Courageous play. Well done Richie!