Autumn Standard League

Over the years, chess has known many grueling and long lasting tournaments. At this very moment, the absolute world elite players are fighting in the World Cup. A month-long tournament in Goa, India with the top three finishers earning a ticket for the prestigious candidates tournament.

Going back in history, before engines started dominating the chess world, a single game could even take longer than one session! If play took too long, they broke off the game and simply continued the next day.

And then there's our own Autumn Standard League, a tournament spanning over three weeks! As a sidenote, we should mention that we only played six games with one hour per person each, but this fast classical format makes it all the more exciting!

Day 1: Small upsets set the tone

With many unrated and talented students joining to try to get their first rating, it was looking at how the rated adults and youngsters would do in the first round.

The very first round immediately had some upsets. Most notably, Man Ho Nathan Huang was able to defeat Aravind Mahadevan as Black. Aravind couldn't recover and spiraled into a complete off-day with a second loss in a row against fellow rated player Duncan Ray Chui. Although there were many close matches, the more experienced players dominated at the end of the day, only allowing two more draws.

Day 2: Youth on top!

In the third round, rating favorite Tang Tsz Sang was held to a draw by U8 Caissa talent Shayne Meng. This opened the door for other youth players with no one in the top 3 born before 2012 after 4 rounds!

Tsz Sang managed to recover from the draw and joined the leading pack in fourth place with 3.5/4.

Further down the table we saw Caissa girl Lolly Chen hold Aravind to a draw after an excellent game by both players. After some tactical fireworks, the game fizzled out to a drawn endgame.

For Lolly, this was the first time getting a result against a rated player in standard chess, congratulations Lolly!

For Aravind, this meant the bleeding had stopped. Finally on the scoreboard, he would go on to win his last three games.

Day 3: Rating favorites prevail

After five rounds, we had two players with 4.5/5: Jake Chong and Tsz Sang Tang. Tsz Sang masterfully steered the game towards a promising endgame where Jake never really had a chance to hold. With 5.5/6, Tsz Sang Tang clinched clear first place, congratulations! Chun Yin Ngai and Jake Chong complete the podium.

At the end of the day, the rating favorites still prevailed and the upcoming youth has to be happy with honorable mentions, for now…

You can check all the results on the chess results page.

On our Instagram you can find a short aftermovie.