Caissa Hong Kong Chess Club

chess in hong kong

James and Miguel Angel lead their age groups after Round 6 in YGP 3

June 17th, 2015

In last Sunday’s round 6 James consolidated his 0.5 points lead by winning against Aaditya. He is also a full point ahead of Oliver, the number 2 in his group U12.

Miguel’s hard -fought win against Harsh kept him also a full point ahead of the numbers 2, 3 and 4, Andy, Anika and Aaditya, all with 3.5 points in the U10 age category.

Harsh (white) vs. Miguel Angel in a long and the last game …

Coming Sunday will be the last match in the YGP cycle and we will hand out the prizes to the winners of the Spring YGP3 and we will announce the overall YGP winners in the the age categories U12 and U10 who will get a fully funded trip to the Dutch Open!

Below the pairing for round 7 and the ranking after 6 rounds.

Pairing Round 7 Caissa YGP 3

Matthew Tan wins Spring Blitz with 11 out of 11

June 16th, 2015

Good news. The Hong Hong Chess Federation is increasingly staging events never held before.

To start with, last week the Spring Rapid 2015, a rapid FIDE rated tournament of 9 rounds held over 3 evenings, ended with bang for Daniel Lam who won the event with a score of 9 points. Congrats Daniel!

Then, last Monday HKCF held the Spring Blitz 2015, also FIDE rated, attracted 36 players. The speed of 3 minutes + 2 seconds increment is something that requires serious practice and our local heroes have not had the chance to play such a tournament in Hong Kong.

In the top 5 we only find Lo Cheuk Wai as known Hong Kong player among an international audience. Thierry Henkinet is the new kid on the block and seems a good addition to the HKG federation. Alexander, on a stop-over from Shanghai, collected medal for 3rd prize. Long, winner of our Caissa Winter and Spring editions, hopefully will change his federation from Germany to Hong Kong soon! To be in this top 5 is not easy.

Top 5

The undisputed winner of the event was Caissa’s Matthew Tan, from Holland, with a monster score of 11 wins. We hope he will have fond memories of the medal he won because it was the first FIDE rated Open Blitz event organized by HKCF – he made history!

Matthew receives 1st prize medal from arbiter KK

Matthew Tan receives 1st prize medal from arbiter KK Chan

Of course, this spring blitz event was a prelude of what is to come and our local heroes have time to practice more in the coming weeks.

Because … HKCF is going a step further by organizing first-time-ever National Championships, FIDE rated, in Blitz and Rapid on 27 June and 5 July respectively. These events are for all age youth groups and Open (yeah, finally also something for adults!).

Hope to see you all there!

Team of 3 wins first choice of Candy

June 7th, 2015

Saturday we played a small team tournament instead of internal competition in DB. The board 1 players in each team played against one another, the board 2 players against each and so for each board.

Prize/Candy Table

The winning team would gain the honor to go first to the candy table to select their preferred candies, the 2nd ranked team would go second and so on.

Despite having 1 player less, team A ended first, team B powered by girls and the brothers Noah and Nathan ended 2nd, team D ended 3rd and team C was 4th.

Team A: 7.5 points

Miguel Angel
Chor Wei
Christopher

Team B: 6.5 points

Mei Jing
Samira
Noah
Nathan

Team C: 4.5 points

Vincent
Suneh
Maximillian
Leonard

Team D: 6 points

Bryant
Jay
Seth
Kian

Team B Mei Jing, Samira, Noah, Nathan against Team C Vincent, Suneh, Max, Leonard

Team A Miguel Angel against team D Bryant

Team A Miguel Angel, Chor Wei, Chris against team D Bryant, Jay, Seth, Kian

Nathan is very pleased having achieved an amazing stalemate against Kian

Nathan (with white) is very pleased having achieved an amazing stalemate against Kian

Updated (5 June) – YGP3 has 6 Players with 3 points after 4 rounds

June 4th, 2015

Differences are minimal in the top half of the YGP cycle. Just like in the YGP1 and YGP2 editions, there surely won’t be a walk-over for any player and we need to sit tight until the final round to see what will eventually happen.

Such tight competition makes this tournament one of the most worthwhile events for our youth as it is also the only event in Hong Kong for youth with regular/standard time control of 90 minutes.

The ranking after 4 rounds here below:

Cross Table Rank after Round 5

Below the pairing of round 5:

First 7 players registered for Open Dutch Youth Championship

June 2nd, 2015

The Open Dutch Youth Championship is now only 2 months away. We have 7 Caissa kids enrolled and with over 10 accompanying persons joining our Hong Kong Bauhinia should create an impact among the Dutch tulips!

Melvin, one of the top scorers in the Secondary section of the HKJCC inter-school, and doing well in our Friday Spring Open, will play in Group B, 1999 or later.

Jasmine and James will play in Group D, 2003 or later.

Miguel Angel, Dutch Champion 2 years ago in Group G, is our player in group E, born in 2005 .

Harold and Mei Jing will play in Group F, born in 2006.

Jinwen, current School World Champion U7, will aim for his next title in Group H, born in 2008 or later.

Of course coach Matthew will also be in Holland to support our team.

If still interested to join – do let us know!

Round 3 Spring Open Results and Pairing Round 4

May 20th, 2015

Last Friday Henry put up a great opening and middle game fight against Matthew but had to accept a loss when in the later part of the game he did not really blunder but also did not always played the best moves. Enough for an IM to crunch out a win…

Melvin, on a fast track of continuous improvements, drew against former champion Long and might not have gotten himself enough after a strong recovery of an early pawn loss.

Newly joined Ray played well and sensibly against Conrad but had to concede a loss after an inaccurate exchange.

Coming Friday in round 4 all players will be in town and it is up to Long to stop Matthew!

Bryant and Seth in Race for DB Saturday Club Championship

May 19th, 2015

After 48 rounds into the Caissa Discovery Bay internal competition Bryant kept his first position by defeating Seth in round 47 in an endgame that was a winning position for Seth who chose to run with the wrong pawn.

Bryant (white) vs. Seth

Because Suneh beat Jay in round 47 he climbed to 2nd position but in round 48 it was the same Bryant who stopped Seth earlier who beat Suneh and because Seth won against Chor Wei in round 48 he is back in 2nd position.

Noteworthy is also the impressive sprint of Vincent who just recently joined but by defeating high ranked players has climbed up to 15th place only after 8 games.

Ranking after round 48 (Punten = points, WA = value, Gsp = played, Gw = win, Rm = draws, Vl = lost)

World School Chess Ends – One World Champion and one 3rd Place!

May 14th, 2015

On the site of the Hong Kong Chess Federation you can find a short entry on the end results of the World School Chess Championship 2015 in Pattaya. Playing under HKCF flag, Bao Jin Wen became World Champion U7 and Michael Deng ended 3rd pace in U9.

Michael Deng with Proud Mom

U7 World Champion Bao Ji Wen with Proud Family

This is probably the best performance ever for Hong Kong. As commented on the HKCF web site, these chess results are indeed remarkably good, however, what was at least as big a win was to see our Hong Kong children bond towards a team. Elephant riding, go-karting, water polo and by and large taking joint meals was the energizing glue between the heavy chess program at World Championship level, aka, playing 4 to 6 hours of serious chess competition per day, especially on the days of double rounds.

Scoring Table Hong Kong Players

The tournament over 9 rounds was run very smoothly in an amicable atmosphere. Everything started and ended in time and there were no incidents that affected the mood of players negatively.

After the children were in the playing hall, the nerves of (grand)fathers and coaches were tested ...

After the children were in the playing hall, the nerves of (grand)fathers, offcials and coaches were tested …

Our U9 Caissa girls Mei Jing and Anika scored 4.5 and 4 points respectively – a good score and the baseline for what is to come.

Anika Showing other Talents on Social Nite

Anika Showing some of her other talents on Social Nite

Also our Caissa boys Alan Pang Bo, Aaditya, Harold, James, Miguel Angel, Oliver and Richard were nothing short of their peers with scores ranging from 3 to 4.5 points. Also here, this is the baseline to improve from in the future.

U11 Huang Ho Pang and U15 Benjamin with 5 and 4 points respectively can also look back at a fine tournament.

Only rarely a computer game came out – here the “leak” was with Miguel Angel and Oliver…

Aaditya Mom Pep-talking

Pep-talk for Harold

Oliver’s Grandma Pep-talk

Pep-talk for Miguel Angel

Lucky Richie – no pep-talk but quickly going through some lines with dad before start of the game …

James and Harold meet the new U7 World Champion Bao Jin Wen

James and Harold congratulate the new U7 World Champion Bao Jin Wen

Having Fun Playing against the New World Champion U7

Thank you all fathers, mothers, grandmoms/dads and Caissa’s coach Matthew and Active Kids’ coach Marcos for having contributed in making this event a success by any standard.

Also good job to Alberto Muniz, who was Hong Kong’s section International Arbiter in the girls section.

In this event Hong Kong made a difference. More to come …

Pairing Round 3 Spring Competition and YGP3

May 14th, 2015

With many of our top youth playing in the World School Chess we had to postpone one round of both the YGP3 Cycle on Sunday and Spring Cycle on Friday evening as well as Saturday competition in Discovery Bay and all lessons of last weekend.

But we will be back and below the pairing of round 3 of both the Spring Open on Friday, with still various BYEs due to late traveling in from Thailand of a handful of players, and the YGP3 on Sunday which should be full house!

Pairing Round 3

Status after 6 rounds World School Chess Championship

May 11th, 2015

Today was a rest day, that is, from 3.30pm a voluntary blitz tournament would be organized as a side activity. The morning would thus require no preparation today, so what better to do than going for … elephant riding! So there we went with 22 of us.

Elephant Riding. Left: Oliver, with Huang Ho and Huang Ho’s Mom. Right: Anika and Dad with Meijing

James and Harold with their Dad

After elephant riding, dehydrated and all, some water polo in the swimming pool offered an excellent way to cool down. James, Harold, Miguel Angel and Richard were the team that took on Matthew, Oliver, Anika, Meijing, Aaditya and Alan. With two versions going around not sure who won …

Water Polo to Cool Down

After all the fun, tomorrow morning will be the start of a serious day again with preparation from 10.15am to push ourselves up the ranking. Note, by the way, the impressive score of U7 Bao Jin Wen of 5.5 out of 6!