Three National Blitz Titles for Caissa Kids!!!

The Hong Kong National Blitz Championships 2017 held yesterday 19 November, although with a relatively smaller player field than expected for a National Championship, was nonetheless delivered smoothly and professionally by HKCFL (all results here). We encourage next time more players to come. Playing blitz is an important ingredient of chess training and development. With blitz as part of a balanced training, which would include longer time control play as well, a player can sharpen instinct, follow and learn from intuition, calculate faster and more efficiently. Hong Kong's own local hero, FM Daniel Lam, Amateur Chess World Champion, was present (and won the Open event, congrats Daniel!) and we hope that this is a signal to other players to not look down on or shy away from a blitz event, especially not if National Titles are at stake from HKCFL, the only formal authoritative FIDE affiliated chess body in Hong Kong.

Few more words about the apparent myth that playing blitz is "not serious", is bad, especially if players already naturally play (too) fast (for standard time control games). Rest assured that playing blitz in a tournament we only have 1-2 times per year in Hong Kong, will not get anyone on-, nor off-track in their chess career. Relax! If World Champion GM Magnus Carlsen, who played hundreds, if not thousands of blitz games since he was very young, is having fun preparing with blitz (0:29s) for a major tournament, combining this with swimming (video 1), we should in Hong Kong not panic too much about having fun.

Video 2: GM Magnus Carlsen Top 13 Tips. Tip #1 (0:18s):"you can learn from any game play as many games against as many people in as many time controls as possible". Tip #4: "the most important, have fun playing chess ..."

Having said all that, big congratulations to all players and prize winners and Champions. We are very proud to see that three players from our Elite Group Training Program put the word 'elite' into the most concrete form possible by becoming National Champions in their age categories. Well done, also to coaches David Rivas and Alberto Muniz leading the EGTP training. The National Champions from Caissa are:

• U8 Champion: Savin Peramunetilleke (10.5 out of 11!) - also the National Champion of Rapid held earlier this year!

• U10 Champion: Seth Peramunetilleke (8.5 out of 11)

• U12 Champion: Miguel Angel Garceran Wang (9 out of 11)

Miguel Angel Champion U12)

Prize Winners U12

Seth Champion U10

Prize Winners U10

Savin Champion U8

Prize Winners U8

Caissa's David Garceran Nieuwenburg honored to be invited by HKCFL to hand out prizes to U8 U10, U12 ... after all, half of them are Caissa students, and one of them his own son ...

In U12 we are also proud of Caissa kid Hsin Hung Cheng, beating many top players and ending 2nd with 8 out of 11. In U14 congrats to Caissa's prize winners Daniel Zheng and Hoi Ting Leung who ended 2nd and 3rd respectively. Well done also to Wing Ki Kwong who became champion in U14.