FM Daniel Lam Champion in Strong Caissa December 2025 Rapid

Players from among Caissa's strongest students across different age categories, together with Caissa coaches as well as strong external guest players, assembled on 7 December for a 6 rounds 15m+3s FIDE rated Rapid.

With a rating average of close to 2,000 from the top 4 players it was clear this would be a tough tournament!

Round 1 followed without major upset, although an interesting draw got on the board between Caissa young talent Spencer Sun and another Hong Kong talent, Lincoln Or. In the endgame, it was enough for Spencer to promote to a queen, but a few slow moves enabled Lincoln to maneuver his remaining pawns and king into an interesting theoretical draw position in a Queen vs Pawn endgame.

Spencer with White ended one pawn up in the end game (left) which was enough to get a Queen (right), but some slow moves with the Queen resulted in a position with a black pawn on f2 and Kh1: a draw, despit e a Queen up!

In Round 2 we got the first slight surprise, or shouldn't we not be (?!), with U10 Chi Ngo Chan holding Caissa coach Sunny Lo to a draw! And a bigger surprise (or again, shouldn't we be!?) happened in Round 3 when on Board 1 Caissa CTP student Brandon Fang scored a win against Caissa Coach CM Emile Boucquet.

Round 4 then had FM Daniel Lam paired against Brandon on Board 1, but there was no firework here and an inaccuracy on Brandon's side helped crown Daniel rather easily to be the only player in lead with 4 points. On Board 2 the Caissa coaches clash between Sunny and Emile ended well for Emile. On Board 3 Caissa Coach WFM Sachintha Kodikara stopped the rise of Chi Ngo for this round. On Board 5 Kin Ho Chu gradually gathered momentum and scored a win in the game against Caissa CTP U8 Xiangyi Meng.

In Round 5 another youth talent U10 Shun Wang Liu held Daniel to a draw by threefold repetition in another interesting endgame with an active Queen for Shun Wang and somewhat disconnected rooks on Daniel's side. On Board 2, the game between Caissa coaches CM Emile and WFM Sachintha resulted in a win for Emile who in the last round would be paired against Daniel for a chance to become Champion.

Daniel vs Brandon (left) and on the Caissa coaches gathering (right) Sachintha vs Emile, watched by Sunny

In Round 6 then, the battle of the U10s, Chi Ngo vs Shun Wang (both on 3.5 points) ended in a win for Chi Ngo who catapulted himself firmly in the Top 6 Prize Winners. Sachintha on Board 4 stopped young Lincoln and from below, but also with 3 points, Kin Ho won against Aravind Mahadevan to secure him a spot in the Top 6 Prize Winners too. Brandon defused a full all-out attack from Sunny on his kingside to claim the win on Board 2 and ended the tournament with a very strong performance: likely some 60 FIDE rating points up

On Board 1, a chess spectacle as could be expected between the two Masters Emile and Daniel, ended finally in a win for Daniel who with 5.5 points became the Caissa December 2025 Rapid Champion!

Arbiter David with Prize Winners (clockwise from top left): Champion Daniel, 2nd Place Brandon, 3rd Place Chi Ngo, 4th Place Emile, 5th Place Sachintha and 6th Place Ho Chu.

Prize Winners with Beautiful Trophies (right?)

Both Shun Wang (U10) and Xiangyi (U8) had an impressive 3.5 points but on tie-break the Best U10 trophy went to Shun Wang, the Best U12 to Ching Yin (also with a strong 3.5 points). Also with 3.5 points we U12 girl Yu Tung received the Best Girl Prize.

Prize Winners (left to right): Best Girl Yu Ting, Best U12 Ching Yin and Best U10 Shun Wang

Well done all!

Thank you all for joining and having jointly created a great event in good atmosphere with some great games.