Bye-bye Summer Age Group Chess Mid August - Will Return in Remainder of 2024 as MAGiC (Monthly Age Group in Caissa!)

On 11 August, with quite a few people still on holiday, we still organised the U7 and U11 Age Group Open Rapid. Slowly warming up to the upcoming youth events organised by various parties in Hong Kong, most notably the official HKCFL personal and interschool events. It was great to see many of the students who took our camps came back to put in practice what was learned over the summer in the camps.

We will be organising more of these events, monthly; MAGiC. Why we do this can be found here.

Turnout was modest but we saw some excellent games appear on various boards. the players' quality was excellent. In U7 third place was shared with Charles, Godwin and Mica who all scored 3 points, but on tie-break the 3rd prize trophy went to Charles. Second place with 4 points went to Binyang but winner, undefeated with 5 wins, was Shayne, young Caissa talent from our Discovery Bay centre - well done! All results are here.

U7 in Action. Prize Winners (left to right) Charles, Shayne and Binyang with newly arrived coaches from Belgium WFM Astrid Barbiers and CM Emile Bouquet

The U11 section also had a modest turnout but also here we saw some good chess happening. Vihaan ended 3rd with 4 points and with the same amount of 4 points Fung Yue ended 2nd. With 5 points Yin Law got 1st Place. All results are here.

U11 in Action, with prize winners (left to right) Vihaan, Yin Law and Fung Yue

On 18 August we had full house in our Sheung Wan centre for the edition of U9 and U13 age categories.

The proverbial Silence before the Storm ...

In U9 we had some of Hong Kong's finest participating amidst a whole group of upcoming new players. The sisters Elena and Sonia decided to divide and conquer the first place and with 4.5 points each they claimed 1st and 2nd Place respectively. William and Arthur got 3rd and 4th place with 4 points and 5th and 6th with 3.5 points went to Lincoln and Clement. The 7th to 13th place were all very close with 3 points but not within reach of a trophy for the Top 6 only. Best Girl not in Top 6 went to Karis. All results are here.

The U13 group saw another girl, Ellie, claim the 1st place with 5 straight wins. Amartya only conceded a loss against Ellie and claimed 2nd Prize while Aldrik with 3 points remained ahead of the pack of 3-pointers among whom Clare got the Best Girl Prize. All results are here.

Thanks a lot to volunteer Caissa student Leonie for helping out as arbiter today and coaches Emile and Astrid (short bio on Our Team page) who joined as arbiters in their first appearance for Caissa.