Caissa Hong Kong Chess Club

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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

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

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)

Spring YGP3 Round 1 Results and Pairing

April 23rd, 2015

In the Spring Cycle events the Youth Grand Prix 3 started last Sunday with. The addition of a few new faces of upcoming talents mixed with some of the more familiar faces will surely make this 3rd and last YGP Standard chess event a worthy conclusion.

Familiar and New Faces behind the Boards

Cross Tabel after R 1 Spring 2015 Caissa Hk

Cross Table after Round 1

After round 1 not so much can be concluded yet. On the other hand, for round 2 we already have a clash of previous YGP champions in their age groups: Miguel Angel with white against James with black. We look forward to it!

Below the rest of the pairing.

Last Chance to Register for 11 April Blitz

April 9th, 2015

Discovery College Youth win Prizes again in HKCF Inter-School

March 25th, 2015

With 4 teams from Discovery College, all Caissa players and students of course!, we set out Sunday morning on 22 March to participate in the HKCF national inter-school event of this year. Unfortunately due to late cancellations we ended up one player short.

The DC Secondary team, with only first year secondary students, had to face very strong and older opponents – but despite this Richard on board 1 and Carlo on board 4 impressed by scoring 5 and 4.5 points respectively. Bryant on board 2, who in several games started off well but then could not convert his better position into a win, scored 1.5 points and Samira on board 3 also scored 1.5 points.

2015interschoolDCsecondary

The DC Upper Primary Team B was the team with only 3 players and of course that hits the motivation. In the last few rounds the team got more settled and started to collect some points. Due to inexperience some games with clear winning advantage were unfortunately not converted into wins but hopefully our kids will see this as a motivation to increase experience and play more often.

2015interschoolDCprimaryteamb

The DC Upper Primary Team A has become a serious title contender already for some years. Also this year we see impressive scores from Miguel Angel on board 1, Mei Jing on board 2 and Chor Wei on board 3 with 5.5, 6 and 5 points respectively. Koza, although starting well, let go a bit in the end but together with the point he scored this team ended on the 4th place and all players received a medal.

Furthermore Miguel Angel received a 3rd Prize medal for 1st board player and Mei Jing collected 2nd Prize for 2nd board player and the 1st Prize for best girl. Way to go Mei Jing!

Mei Jing showing off her 3 medals

The DC Lower Primary Team, Disco Knights, impressed a lot. James on board 1 played calmly and scored a good 4 points on board 1. Noah was especially in form and with 5 points he received 3rd Prize medal for board 2. Well done Noah – your first prize is in – surely more to come!

DC Disco Knights pep-talked by coach Michel

Kian on board 3 played very well but was unlucky at times and with a good score of 4 points remained just out of the prize zone. Nathan, in his 2nd tournament, but first one with a clock from the beginning, kept an eye too many on the clock. However, a memorable game he played check mating his opponent on the back rank with 2 bishops. Nathan is an upcoming talent and we will see more from him.

Disco Knights before Action

Disco Knights in Action

The team ended 5th place. Well done boys!

2015interschoolDClowerprimary

Samira jumps to 2nd position and Suneh sets scholar’s mate record for the club

January 31st, 2015

After 33 rounds since the start of this season in September 2014, the Discovery Bay internal club competition for the club members Saturdays, shows a ranking in flux. Most noteworthy, compared to the ranking on 25 October, is that Samira (Advanced group) has settled strongly on 2nd place and the Intermediate group players Suneh, Jay and Wo Hang have claimed a spot in the top 10. From the Beginners group Seth and Noah have pushed themselves up close to the top 10 – very impressive.

Chor Xi (white) against Nathan

Good to see that our very youngest players Nathan and Chor Xi start winning regularly and much less so lose because of falling for opening tricks. Speaking of which, we had last week an absolute record set by Suneh, who in a round robin of 5 players beat all his 4 opponents by Scholar’s mate variations – even playing with black, Suneh’s opponents’ white kings collapsed on f2.

Jay with white against Suneh - today no Scholar's mate ...

Jay with white moved his queen out well against Suneh’s Bb6 and Qc5 battery aiming for f2 – today no Scholar’s mate

Christopher 9white) against Koza in foreground and Samira scoring her 2nd win of the day against Joshua in the back.

Christopher (white) against Koza in foreground and Samira scoring her 2nd win of the day against Joshua in the back.

Note that we play with the Keizer System. It can thus be so that players who have played less, but against opponents who are higher ranked, will have a higher ranking than players who played more and/or won more games, but against lower ranked opponents. You can read a good explanation on the Keizer System here. Below the ranking as of 31 January 2015.

DB Internal Competition - Rank After Round 33 on 31 Janaury 2015

DB Internal Competition – Rank After Round 33 on 31 January 2015 (Punten = points, Wa = value, Gsp = played, Gw= win, Rm= draw, Vl = lose)

IM Marcos Llaneza wins 4th Discovery Bay Rapid Open

December 1st, 2014

Caissa 4th Discovery Bay Open Rapid

Show me the whole photo album first before I start reading!

The 4th edition of Caissa’s Discovery Bay Open Rapid last Saturday went smooth. We were glad to again have guests coming over from Shenzhen and we were also happy to see some of Hong Kong’s highest rated players, including ‘local chess celebrity’ Daniel Lam and International Master Marcos Llaneza from Spain, join us in our cozy corner of Hong Kong.

Thanks Rapid Moms for bringing in your children from far away in Hong Kong and as far as Shenzhen.

We also look back with modest pride to our very own Caissa members, especially our youth players, who definitely made a strong impact and grossed 8 out of the 11 prizes available!

As always in our Open events, players of all age categories were mixed and played against one another, young against more experienced. Youth players, however, played for prizes in their respective age categories of U8 (2007 or earlier), U10 (2005/6) and U12 (2003/4).

Young against experienced …

In the U8 category Noah (1.5 points) and Kian and Ritvik (both 2 points – note that Ritvik had missed the first 3 rounds) got used after several rounds to the nerves of tournament play and as they began to play slower they started collecting points.

Ritvik U10 playing against Samuel U12

Kian in action

Result corner – the most important place in the venue … Seth making sure he is still on top!

It was however our guest player from Shenzen, Jin Hao, also with 2 points, who won 2nd prize ahead of Kian and Ritvik on tie-break. Yet, with 3 points, the Champion of U8 was Caissa’s young talent Seth. Well done!

Seth and Jin Hao

In the U10 category we had a mix of very experienced players as well as some with very little or no tournament experience at all.

Pak's little sister checkmates in 1 move!

Pak’s little sister, supporter today, checkmates in 1 move … we’ll be hearing more from her!

Kevin was among the first-timers and his 1.5 points is not a bad result at all in this strong field, including adults. Yat Hei, Samuel and Pak all scored 3 points but the 4th prize went to Harold with 3.5 points. Mei Jing defended the honour of all girls in and around DB well by scoring 4 points, ending 12th overall and 3rd in the U10 group.

Happy Mei Jing

Miguel Angel, who was leading this age category until the last round, found Daniel in round 7 to be an obstacle too strong and by losing Miguel Angel ended 7th place overall and 2nd place in U10 with 4.5 points. Teddy did good business in the last round by defeating soon-to-be DB resident Matthew and with 5 points he ended 6th overall and became Champion of this age group.

U10 prize winners: Migueal Angel, Mei Jing, Harold and Teddy

U10 prize winners: Miguel Angel, Mei Jing, Harold and Teddy

The U12 age group also comprised of some very experienced as well as very new players. Samira scored 2 points and Jay with 3 points ended 4th in this age group. James Kwong with 5 points managed to end 3rd overall and as such he was entitled to get 3rd prize in the Open group. Herewith Toby, with 4 points could collect 1st prize in the U12 group and Richard, also with 4 points, collected 2nd prize.

U12 Prize Winners Toby and Richard

In the Open group then, 3rd prize went to James Kwong, 2nd prize to Daniel with 6 points, only having conceded a loss against the new DB Open Rapid Champion IM Marcos who scored 7 out of 7.

New kid in town, Matthew, started off well with 4 out of 4

Marco vs. Daniel and Billy vs. Long in the back

Marcos vs. Daniel and Billy vs. Long in the back

Open Prize Winners Daniel, James and Marcos

Final Ranking

For youth players this event qualified for the Grand Prix with a pool of 18 points into U12 and 48 points in U10. The points were distributed as per below table with new ranking.

YGP Score and Ranking per 29 Nov 2014

Miguel Angel Leads DB Competition

October 29th, 2014

Last Saturday, in the Step 3 & 4 morning class, after the dozen or so tactic puzzles, we experimented with a fun way to play chess, well, kind of chess. Using all chess rules, in 4 player chess opponents play against each other on the same board, like it was arguably played in a very original version of chess far back in time in India.

Machiavelli, von Clausewitz, Sun Tsu and the likes would have smiled seeing the players were quick to understand the importance of diplomatic alliances, creating and breaking them many times as the game progressed.

More than forks, pins and double attacks Jay, Chor Wei, Jacob and Lucas soon found out the importance of alliances

In between the two games of competition Nitai, Ian, Ada and Koza tried out their luck, observered by Nathan

The Advanced Group is merged into the Intermediate and Beginners Group to make pairing easier. Each player will of course still only play for the prize in his or her category but chances are for an Intermediate player who scores well to face an Advanced player and if he/she is in form crisis to also play the top Beginners.

Miguel Angel scored an important win in his second game against Koji that pushed him up to first place.

DB Internal ranking 2014-15 October 25

HK – Macao Interport Postponed

October 19th, 2014

The planned 16 November 2014 traditional Interport Chess match between Macao and Hong Kong, to be hosted by Caissa in Hong Kong, has to be postponed because as of now the Hong Kong Chess Federation have still not announced the date of the Hong Kong Junior Championships which normally take place in November.

In order to avoid possibly unnecessary logistics and dissapointment like happened before, we have agreed with the Macao Chess Federation to pick a date in the first quarter of 2015.

It would be helpful if HKCF start to publish a yearly, or at least half yearly calendar of their few, but important youth events, around which other organizers can work for their tournaments.

Here are two events we previously organized:

December 2013 edition: Macao Wins
March 2013 edition: Hong Kong Wins