First and Second Places in Shenzhen Cross-Strait 2019

In the first days of August 2019 our coach IM Marcos Llaneza accompanied Samuel Lam and Caissa kid Gabriel Chan who had just returned from a very successful trip in Taiwan to the yearly recurring Cross Strait Chess Festival organised by our sister chess club Huateng in Shenzhen. At the prize ceremony we also saw our Malvern College ECA student Lixian Yang who did a good job.

Marcos:

"The festival had 11 level sections, some of them divided in two groups by gender. More than 600 players! (maybe in Asia this means nothing but if you compare to Europe...) coming from different parts of China, located in two different playing halls along a very beautiful landscape inside an Old Hakka town.

Only the top four sections were playing with clock, chess sets are small and the tournament is not valid for rating but it's a great training opportunity to play games without any kind of pressure, and test our chess skills after the summer break.

The organisation is very good, with a lot of people (I believe most of them volunteers) involved. Hope to see the sun tomorrow, to enjoy the views and keep on winning games ...

Finally, to thank Mr. Liu for his job. Even if my Chinese skills are far from decent, he is always keen to solve any issue."

From Hong Kong we had Samuel and Gabriel joining the Caissa delegation and they did extremely well in respectively group 5 and 6. Samuel Champion and Gabriel 2nd place! Very good!!!