First online edition of this ISF tournament, and it was a big success with over 40 students from 15 different schools.  This 5-day Grand Prix competition over one week has offered the perfect opportunity for students to practice, train and have fun playing chess. All the players gave us plenty of exciting moments and beautiful tactics. The pressure of running out of time definitely added to that excitement and there were points in play until literally the last second of every day.  In particular, our ActiveKids The Chess Academy (TCA) students did extremely well – sweeping First Places in all three sections!

Below is the result in each section (Students name with * are under TCA coaching) 

Lower Primary Section:
1st Place – Leung Shun Him (ICS)*
2nd Place – David Zion Chiu (CIS)
3rd Place – Kainos Wong (St. Peter)*

The players in this category showed great fighting spirit and definitely gave us some really fun games to watch. There was a clear winner, Leung Shun Him, who won the tournament almost every day and in a very convincing way too. In second place finished David Zion Chiu. The battles between these two players were memorable and a clear proof of their high level. In third place Kainos Wong (St. Peter – TCA) managed to win one of the competitions with his hyper-aggressive style that made him lose more games than some of the players behind him, but also allowed him to win more games. In 4th place a very solid and creative Lingshen Bu from ISF only lost his matches against the top 2. In 5th place another ISF student, Xiaoyang Wang showed how much he has improved in this first year playing chess competitions and scored some really nice victories even against the winners.

 

Upper Primary Section:
1st Place – Max Dingwell (GSIS)*
2nd Place – Jacob Lu (SIS)
3rd Place – Jamison Kao (HKIS)

Max Dingwell dominated this category from the first day and won 3 out of the 5 days. He scored some really hard fought points against the Secondary players and that allowed him to keep his competitor at a safe distance. In second place finished Jacob Lu, who won the second day in a brilliant style defeating everyone (including the Secondary players!). In 3rd place we find Jamison Kao who also won one of the days. He consistently scored points against all his opponents and deserved this place in the top3. In 4th place Michelle Chan, only 1 point behind Jamison but showing a very promising style with many beautiful tactics throughout the tournament. The same could be said about Zhiming Bu, who finished in 5th place and with her attacking style got winning positions against the top rated players.

 

Secondary Section:
1st place – Thanneermalai Kannappan (West Island)*
2nd place Ben Han (ISF)*
3rd place – Justin (ISF)*

Some of the best young players in HK gave us 5 days of intense fight and very interesting games. Thanneermalai Kannappan was the clear winner, finishing in 1st place 4 out of 5 days. His battles with Ben Han and Justin Cheng were epic and surely all of them learnt some lessons for the future. In second place finished the aforementioned Ben Han, who couldn’t play a couple of days and that penalized his score. In 3rd place we find Justin Cheng, who couldn’t adjust to the system and found himself playing a lot less games than his rivals. 4th place was for Andrei Lupu, very consistently beating everyone outside the top3 and showing some very creative tactics, and in 5th place Jayden Lam, who scored some great results in some of the days that let him finish above all the other players.

 

The result of the ISF Academy Grand Prix Tournament 2020 has been posted on www.TheChessAcademyHK.com , and we will contact the winners directly for the prizes. Thank you once again for your support to The Chess Academy. We hope to see you again in our next Tournament!