Transfer Chess Tournament in Hong Kong: Fun and Games!

Transfer chess (bug house) tournaments, at least not as recent as in the last 15 years, had not been held in Hong Kong. But we at Caissa broke the taboo that transfer chess should be avoided.

Transfer chess is fun to do and in chess-developed countries it is what one does at the club when at leisure, especially when you are young. Worried about your chess level by playing transfer chess? Guaranteed, only the extremely odd IM or GM level player would not have played transfer chess in his life. Sure, to become better in chess, transfer chess is not on top of the list of a training program, curriculum wise. However, it definitely tops the list of occasional things to do to keep chess creatively interesting, fun and social. The invisible ingredients, like professional and inspirational coaching, that maximizes effectiveness of a training curriculum.

All that aside, om 7 April the 20 players that set the first step on Hong Kong transfer chess soil formed teams. Transfer chess rules can be different depending on the chess jurisdiction. At Caissa we applied following rules:

A piece cannot be put on the board directly giving check
A game is finished once both players are done and the result can be that a team wins (2 Match Points), teams draw (1 Match Point) or a team loses.

Based on the above team Captain Underpants (coach Matthew and Michelle) managed to remain undefeated as a team (5 ties, 4 wins) and deservedly one 3rd prize.

Team M&M (coach Marcos and Marcus) tied on Match Points with Captain Underpants but scored 0.5 Board Point more: 2nd prize!

But the most impressive score came from the A+ Team youngsters Gerent and Samuel who only allowed 3 ties and won all the rest of the games: Champions!