Caissa Hong Kong Chess Club

chess in hong kong

Caissa and Discovery College continue to collect Prizes

April 2nd, 2015

March was a good month for youth chess in Hong Kong. First of all we played out the Caissa Winter YGP with our Teddy emerging as champion.

A week later we had a dozen of our players participate in the Aktive Kids event bringing home personal and school trophies.

The week thereafter, on March 22, our kids again booked success, for school and personal, in the HKCF official inter-school event.

On 28-29 March it was HK Chess Juniors’ turn to hold an inter-school event and it went smooth. Compared to the official HKCF tournament a week earlier the venue was very crowded and too many parents within ‘intervening’ distance but the advantage was that the location offered outdoor areas where children in between their rounds could play.

Coach Matthew making sure the team is ready – and they were!

Discovery College participated with one team in Lower Primary and these Caissa pupils showed great spirit.

James on board 1 faced tough opponents and scored a good 3 points. On board 2 Seth, after a small dip after round 1, won a few in a row and ended with 4 points. Nathan on board 4 was less distracted now by the clocks and also scored 4 points, very good for a P1 student. Noah on board 3 was in top form and scored the full 7 out of 7 – and like last week collected a personal prize, but this time the top scorer prize!

James (back), Seth (standing) and Nathan and Noah analysing during the breaks

Noah, Nathan, James and Seth celebrate with Matthew

Proud coach Michel with happy Nathan and Noah

The team ended 5th out of 22 teams and that is a great result – well done DC team!

But Caissa also has students who do not go to Discovery College. In the Lower Primary Ritvik ended 7th with his Swiss German team and with 5.5 points got a personal prize: 3rd prize topscorer board 1. Nice!

Jake, who just started 3 weeks ago as Caissa student from scratch played on board 2 of the Hong Kong International C in his 1st tournament and for him this tournament was about getting experience only.

Caissa’s players in the Upper Primary were also active. Caissa student Howard played a great tournament and in his Quarry Bay School team B got 2nd top scorer prize on board 1 with 6.5 points. Impressive!

On board 2, Caissa member Toby Mak in the Quarry Bay School A Team, scored 6 points and got 2nd Prize Topscorer board 2 and 2nd prize for the team. Anika from Swiss German team A scored 5 points on board 2 – and with some more luck would have had a full point more.

Finally, in the Secondary we are very proud of Melvin Cheung who got shared 1st prize topscorer on board 1 of HK International Team A with 6 points. That is by any standard an impressive score. Congrats Melvin.

Melvin with 6 points on board 1 wins 2nd Prize

Melvin with 6 points on board 1 wins and wears 2nd Prize medal

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

Winter Youth Grand Prix (YPG2) Round 1 Results

January 14th, 2015

Sunday 11 January the second cycle of standard chess (90 minutes for each player) took off with again some of Hong Kong’s best youth players competing for trophy prizes and grand prix points for sponsored overseas tournment participation. The current ranking in the YGP can be found in this entry.

On board 1, two prize winners of the preceeding YGP1, James and Andy had a tense game which in the end, pressurising the position, James managed to turn into a win.

Harold against … who?

Harold against Marco!

On board 2 Harold lost a piece somewhere down the line in the middle game and Marco had no problem converting the material advantage into a win.

On board 3 we had again 2 prize winners of the preceding YGP, Oliver and Miguel Angel, playing against each other. The game resulted in a draw when Miguel Angel did not see a way through after having closed down the position with his powerful black pawns on a5, b4 and c3.

On board 4 Pak lost a piece against Richard who remained cool enough to stop Pak from getting enough counter play with his advanced a-pawn.

Pak with white against Richard

On board 6 Ronald managed to win material from Samuel early in the game and converted this into a straightforward win and on board 7 Toby’s black queen had entered on b2 to create some havoc but found no way out when Teddy trapped it there and therewith secured the win.

Teddy with White against Toby

We had an odd number of players and Mei Jing was (very voluntarily) paired against the BYE.

There were no requests for a BYE for coming Sunday before today, Wednesday 12 noon, and the pairing for round 2 is a per below.

YGP Pairing Round 2

Great Results for Caissa Youth in QBS Junior Star Tournament

November 10th, 2014

The chesskids team tasked with organizing the 3rd Quarry Bay School Junior Chess Star Competition did a great job last Sunday.

In 2012 and in 2013 Caissa members had brought home Champion and other prizes and that set the bar high for this year’s group. But they were up to their task!

In this all ESF Schools event the Primary 1-4 years play in one group and the Primary 5-6 play in another group

Among Caissa members we had 14 participants:

P1-P4: Mei Jing (last year’s 2nd place), James G, Justin, Noah and Seth (Discovery College), Harold (Kowloon Junior) and Louis (Quarry Bay)
P5-P6: Miguel Angel (last year’s 1st in P1-P4) and Ashlin (Discovery College), Toby, Thomas and Howard (Quarry Bay) James K (last year 2nd, Kowloon Junior) and Jay (Bradbury).

P1-P4

Justin and Noah scored 3 points out of 6 games and ended 14th and 12th respectively. This was Noah’s first tournament and scoring 50% is an impressive result.

Noah ready behind his black pieces and Harold looks relaxed against Mei Jing in the back...

Noah ready behind his black pieces and Harold looks relaxed against Mei Jing on the next board …

Seth, Louis and James G scored 3.5 points ending on 9th, 10th and 11th place – unfortunately for James G he just ended outside of the prize range. Congrats to Louis and Seth with their medals. A fine result for both boys and very impressive of Seth who played his first tournament ever.

With 5 points Harold ended 2nd having lost only to Mei Jing who became Champion with 6 out of 6. Well done!

Prize Winners P1-4 Group

Mei Jing Champion P1-4: Girl Power!

P5-P6

Jay had a tough day and did not get his engines started. Thomas started very well with 2 out of 3 but perhaps in the end fell the energy drain away and he found it difficult to get back into his winning streak of the morning.

Thomas with black against Rachel

Jay always in good mood!

Howard recovered well from his first round loss and ended 11th, just 1 place out of reach of prizes. Miguel Angel this year ended 5th and won a medal. Toby ended 3rd getting a trophy and James K with a score of 6 out of 6 claimed the title.

Good job all!

Prize Winners P5-6

Unfortunately we do not have the end ranking with points of this group, but below is the ranking:

End Ranking P5-P6

Benjamin, Oliver and Miguel Angel Winners of YGP 1

October 27th, 2014

It does not happen often that in a tournament with 7 rounds 5.5 points is the top score. We are glad to see that in our first YGP there was no runaway winner and the competition remained extremely fierce until the last round. From that perspective we have achieved a major goal: youth playing and learning from meaningful games at standard time control.

Miguel Angel and Teddy Warming Up before Round 7

At the start of round 7, Benjamin, James, Ronald and Miguel Angel all had 4.5 points closely followed by Oliver and Rachel with 4 points and Richard and Harold with 3.5 points.

It was unfortunate that on the top board the game between Miguel Angel and Ronald had to end in a win by default for Miguel Angel as Ronald could not be in town on Sunday. The expected fireworks from that game, however, were well spread out over the other boards.

Rachel with white on board 2 against Benjamin played the longest game – again, almost the full 3 hours. The position seemed to be quite equal until in the endgame of Queen + Bishop and few pawns Benjamin managed to break through to win some pawns, sufficient for the win.

Oliver played active on the king side, pushing up his rook supported h-pawn and lining up his bishop, queen and knight to assault James’ f7-g6-h7 defense. After a few exchanges black was a piece down and the exposed king was too vulnerable for further counter play.

Harold with black on board 4 made a mistake against Richard that proved to be fatal quickly and on board 5 Mei Jing with white entered an endgame of knight + pawns against Steven’s bishop + pawns which Mei Jing managed to win by stopping Steven’s king side pawn majority before rushing her 3 against 1 pawn majority on the queen side.

Andy beat Samach on board 6 and on board 7 we got a sharp Sicilian with Marco storming his white pawns into the black’s king side while Teddy aimed his pawn march to breach the defense of the white king castled on the queen side. Teddy had a defensive idea that stalled Marco’s attack just long enough for his own attack to be decisive, promoting his a pawn followed by check mate.

Toby on board 8 stayed very focused and precise enough to win his game with white against Sabrina and Samual on board 9 did not allow Ray to recover from various careless mistakes.

Final Ranking Cross Table

Because we only have one U14 player, the U14 category was merged into U12 and instead of 2 prizes in U12 we increased to 3 prizes for U14-U12. The trophies and prize money we will hand out on a separate occasion soon about which we will inform you.

At risk of repeating, again we congratulate all players for their impressive fighting spirit which resulted in a tournament in which it was not sure until the last minutes who would be the prize winners.

Special congratulations to:

Benjamin for winning the tournament and be the number 1 in the U14-U12 group
Oliver for being the best U12 player and 3rd place in the overall ranking
Miguel Angel for being the only undefeated player, 2nd in the overall ranking and number 1 in the U10 group.

Finally, this first Youth Grand Prix event resulted in the first ranking on the YGP table. Given the little difference in strength so far anything can happen as we proceed into the next YGP qualifying events.

Register now for the Rapid on 29 November and the Blitz on 7 December. And keep your agendas open for the Open YGP2 starting 11 January 2015.

YGP Ranking after YGP 1

Autumn Youth Grand Prix Starts Sunday 31 August – Strong Line-Up!

August 22nd, 2014

Sunday 31 August we will start our first Youth Grand Prix (YGP) event in the 2014-15 YGP cycle of 6 such events. This first event is Standard chess with 90 minutes per player time control and we have some of hong Kong’s finest players lined up, alphabetically:

Marco Ching
Samach Chow
Ronald Choy
Mei Jing Garceran Wang
Miguel Angel Garceran Wang
Wing Ki James Kwong
Wing Shun Harold Kwong
Ray Leung
Toby Mak
Benjamin Oh
Richard Takasumi
Teddy Yang
Oliver Yau

How did it work again?

At this moment we have 13 players. For this Standard chess event each player brings in 5 YGP points (for a Rapid and Blitz event each player brings in 3 YGP points).

Currently the pool of YGP points in this event is thus 13×5=65 points.

As explained, the winner of the event will get 30% of the points, 2nd place will get 25%, 3rd place 20%, 4th place 15% and 5th place 10%. In other words, if no more player joins (but registration is still open!), the 1st place will get 18.5 points (0.3×65), and similarly the 5th place will get 6.5 points and so on.

After 6 YGP events we will see who has most YGP points. The top performers can qualify to play fully sponsored, including travel and lodging, in the Open Dutch Youth first week of August 2015 in U14, U12 or U10.

Of course at the end of 7 rounds of this first event we will also have trophies and cash prizes. But more so than winning in this particular event, the best thing is you get to practice Standard chess against your peers and some of Hong Kong’s strongest players. We look forward to see some tough and exciting games with lots to learn.

Finally, note that in the first 4 rounds you can have maximum 2 BYEs, if mentioned the Wednesday before the Sunday game. This kind of BYE will give you 0.5 points.

Fu Hao Chess Club from Mainland Nan Chang to visit Caissa in Discovery Bay for Youth Match on 5 July

June 11th, 2014

Nanchang_Prefecture_within_Jiangxi_(China)

Nan Chang Prefecture is part of China’s southern Jiangxi province

After having played somewhat regularly against youth teams from Macao and Guangzhou, we will now receive 23 youth players from Nan Chang, Mainland China.

All players are under 12 and most players are around the age of 8 years old – but this time we do not divide the players in teams of age groups.

Instead, we will be dividing the players in teams based on their level estimated according to the Step Method as used at our club.

To underline the friendly dimension of the match players are asked to bring their favorite book and exchange that with their opponent as a personal souvenir.

This is a club against club event and the Hong Kong players are selected from Caissa members/students but we do invite some other guest players to join our team. If you are not our member/student but are interested, let us know before 21 June at: [email protected]

Two Caissa Players Represent Hong Kong in the World Youth Chess Championship in Al Ain (UAE)

December 7th, 2013

Our own home grown Caissa players Miguel Angel and Mei Jing will represent Hong Kong at the World Youth Chess Championship 2013 (17-29 December) in the Under 8 category.

Unfortunately there are no other players representing Hong Kong in the other age categories and it is therefore up to Miguel Angel and Mei Jing to leave a positive impression of chess in Hong Kong.

Form of the day, mental mindset, physical status and some luck are important influencing factors but if all come together well, some points will surely be scored.

Miguel Angel, Hong Kong National Blitz Champion U8 2012, Open Dutch Youth Champion U8 2013, ESF Schools Champion Lower Primary (2012, 2013) and for several years a top 5 finalist in his age group in the Hong Kong National Championships will benefit from the fact he is one of the older players in Under 8.

Mei Jing, number 5 in the World Youth School Championship U7 girls, ESF Schools Lower Primary 2nd place (2013) and best girl in her age group several years in a row in the Hong Kong National Championships is in good form but will have to overcome she is likely among the youngest in the U8 category.

We will not be aiming too high, have fun, but definitely do our best.

Pearl Delta Cup Return Interport Match in Macao Scheduled for 30 November

November 15th, 2013

On Saturday 30 November our Hong Kong youth will travel to Macao to play in the Macao – Hong Kong traditional Interport Chess match to defend the Pearl Delta Cup won on last March 2

A total of 16 players, four players, three boys and one girl in each of the four age categories, U8, U10, U12 and U14, will play 4 rounds of 10 minutes per person.

Grupo de Xadrez de Macau (Macau Chess Federation), the organizer, has arranged for team prizes, individual prizes and medals.

We look forward to it!

Discovery College Students Bring Top Prizes Home from QBS all-ESF Primary Chess Tournament

October 6th, 2013

The second edition of the Quarry Bay School organized ESF schools Primary School chess tournament was a great success. In all aspects: weather, premisses, organization and … results!

The weather was excellent, probably a bit hot down at sea level, but up the mountain where QBS is housed, the wind (and aircon …) created a very pleasant atmosphere. The organization of the event was outsourced to chesskids and the entire event was very well managed, child-friendly and professional.

Different from last year the Discovery College students had not specifically trained for this event as 7 out of the 8 players already train or play with Caissa on a weekly basis.

Left to right: Saga, Mei Jing, Ashlin, Maxwell, Chor Wei, Richard, Miguel Angel, Arnav

Upper Primary (P5-P6)

Chor Wei, who played very well last year in the Lower Primary scoring 4.5 points scored a very decent 3.5 points in this section.

Ashlin played her first tournament ever and scored 0.5 points after 4 rounds. Unfortunately she had to miss the second half of the event and likely therefore she missed out at least another point or two.

Richard, champion in this category last year, faced sure competition, particularly from his peer-talents James Kwong and Collin Wong, but managed to prolong his title with an impressive score of 6.5 out of 7.

Richard (left) Champion Upper Primary

Lower Primary (P1-P4)

Some of our players here played too fast, not atypical for this age group and nothing to worry about. With continuous play this will improve.

Saga, somewhat overestimating her opponents, scored 2.5 points ending 22nd. Similarly, Arnav, who last year scored 1.5 points, scored 2.5 points (ending 23rd) this year and as confidence grows, fear will make place for respect for the opponent and that is an important major break-through for all players.

Maxwell, who scored 3.5 points last year, improved his score with his 4 points this time and ended very respectably on 11th place. Surely more is within reach if the urge for speed can be better balanced.

Mei Jing, who last year scored 3 points, made the biggest improvement and with 6 points (only losing against her brother, school and chess club mate, Miguel Angel) she claimed 2nd prize, 1 full point loose from number 3.

Miguel Angel, last year’s champion with 6.5 points, was unstoppable and with his 7 points 100% score he claimed the 1st prize again, convincingly.

Miguel Angel and Mei Jing (left) end 1st and 2nd respectively in Lower Primary