Guided Tournament-Experience Play for (Young) Starters

MFM – My First Moves Regulation

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1. Purpose: if you are a young starter it takes a while before you know how all the pieces move, where to place them in the opening, how to give checkmate or getting out check smartly, or avoiding illegal moves. The knight moves might still be tricky and all the exceptions of castling might not yet be fully internalised.

Yet, even when you only know how a few pieces move, chess games based on these pieces can be played as a tournament game. In such a way reinforcing of what you know, in a supervised competitive/tournament setting where rule-based mistakes are not punished but simply corrected, playing for a medal, is part of a training approach to keep motivation up. 

2. Schedule: seasonal cycle oriented: one MFM event in the Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn. 

3. Eligibility: all our students from Sheung Wan, Discovery Bay, private and online students as well as all our school ECA students are invited to join from levels Stepping Stones 1, Stepping Stones 2, not having completed Step 1 and/or in Step 1 but never having played a tournament before. All other students can join our End of Month (EOM).

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4. Time Control: games are played in Rapid format of 15m or 10m.

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5. Format: The players, Caissa students well known by Caissa trainers, will be assigned to their group based on previous tournament results, the player's Step level or another form of assessment done by the Caissa coaches. Our objective is to make the games as balanced as possible for everybody.

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6. Prizes Awarding: The winner, 2nd place and 3rd place (depending on the size of the group, there could be additional prizes) of each MFM receives a medal. 

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7. Promotion: the tournament offers insight to the coaches and players/parents will be informed when a players is ready to start the EOM cycle in Group D.