Team Caissa in Phuket: Good Results and Fun!

The Blue Chevalier Open 2024 in Phuket required all participants to have a rating of 1400 or higher: an excellent event thus to play demanding games and hone chess skills in practice. And that is exactly what happened!

Team Caissa: Mikail, Leonie, Eric, Paul, Marvin and coach Matthew

As part of the preparation, in different sessions before departure coach Matthew had held meetings at Caissa Sheung Wan Centre with the team members so that in Phuket the logistics were clear about joint activities, playing, preparation etc.

Leonie arrived one day later but the rest was ready to play from round 1 in good shape.

Group Preparation talk by coach Matthew before the rounds.

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Players ready!

The results (all results are here) were not bad at all. Several of the players beat 1800 and 1900+ players. From chess-results we can see that:

Mikail with 4.5 points earned over 60 rating points
Paul, also 4.5 points, gained over 90 points
Eric with 3.5 points gained over 70 rating points
Marvin scored 2.5 points, had a tough tournament in terms of the score but as he played strong opponents there is virtually no change in terms of rating points
Leonie, who missed day one, had difficulties to get her chess-engine going and with a score of 2 points lost rating points but there is no doubt that she will recover in a next event!

Noteworthy also was that Pak Yu Poon, Caissa CTP trained student in past was also in Phuket, scored 5 points and gained over 30 rating points. Also Kingston Haoyang Wu, Caissa (CTP) student was at the event and with an excellent score of 4.5 points gained close to 90 rating points.

Of course, going a tournament like this is not only about scoring points, but also about socializing and forging chess friendships that can hold for a very long, if not life, time. That is one of the beauties of being able to play chess.