The Hong Kong Chess Federation 1st National Blitz Championship was an important event in various ways. It would, for the first time in decades, hand out formal National Champion titles and as such formal entitlement to represent Hong Kong in international events. Also, the event was FIDE rated and along the youth age categories there was this time also an Open section for adults.

And the event was a great success for Caissa players, young and old! We already alluded to the fact that some of our players were smoking hot on our chess party yesterday, such that prizes would seriously expected to be within reach, the actual results were better than we could expect.

 

 

In U8 we only had 2 Caissa students, Seth and Mahir. Mahir, among the youngest in this age group, played his first tournament and scored 3 points but gained lots of experience which is the only goal in your first tournament. Seth, whose strength lies in longer chess games, with 6 points out of 11 had a good tournament in a 3 minutes + 2 seconds time control.

Congratulations to the top 3, Steven, Zeth and Samach who all played in one of the Caissa YGP events and scored well there too. Here are all results of U8.

In U10 we had our hot shot students Samuel, Kevin, Meijing, Aaditya and Miguel Angel lined up with Caissa member Harold.

Miguel Angel proved to be strongest player in this age group: congratulations Champ! Aaditya ended 4th just one place out of a prize. Meijing became Girl Champion – there was unfortunately only one girl. We are very proud of all our students who scored many points. Also congrats to our long time chess friends Adrian and Gerent with their 2nd and 3rd place.

 

 

In U12 our  Caissa gunners were Jay, Richard and Oliver. Jay has had very limited practice in 3 minutes + 2 seconds but still managed to score 4 points.

Although in the direct confrontation Oliver beat Richard, it was Richard who managed to stay on top after 11 rounds impressively defeating all other top 6 players. Oliver just fell out of prizes on 4th place and big congrats to Richard with his National Champion title.

 

All other players were pooled in the Open group. From Caissa we had Tejpal, Koji, Conrad, Melvin and Long participating.

Tejpal just (re)started chess recently and this tournament is for him to oil his engine. The 3.5 points scored is not bad after a very long time hiatus. Koji and Conrad managed to score 5 points, just short of 50% ending solidly in the middle range.

The U16 and other age categories higher than U12 were pooled in the Open and Melvin with 5.5 points ended 6th place overall but that score brought him the title of National Champion U16. Well done Melvin, we are proud of you!

In Open, Long, our 2 times in a row Caissa champion in our Friday evening cycles, ended 2nd place and was the only person to draw against the new National Champion Daniel. Well done Long! And congratulations to our friend Daniel too.