Tostifabriek (The Netherlands) wins Caissa First Online Arena Grand Prix
When we decided to organize the first serious online grand prix tournament in Hong Kong we didn't know how it would turn out. We had some confidence though, after all, end March we had done a "trial" event successfully, attracting some 60 players.
For our Caissa Arena Grand Prix (CAGP) it was required that all participants would join our Lichess Caissa chess club. We were glad to see that in short time we had over 100 members. Our prerequisite for the players was that we needed to know them directly or indirectly: our students, friends, tournament players we know etc. Our next step could be to make it fully Open.
The CAGP was organised such that we had 4 qualifier events, all on Sunday 4-6pm. The top two in each event would automatically qualify for the knock-out finals. After 4 events we woukd thus have 8 players. The other 8 players would be the players with most grand prix points: first plaver 12 points, 2nd place 11 points and so on until 12th place 1 point.
Qualifier round 1, 5 April. 57 players. Top 2: 1. AlbertoMuniz, 2. delriver. All matches and results.
Qualifier round 2, 19 April. 52 players. Top 2: 1. delriver, 2. AlbertoMuniz. Because they already qualified numbers 3 and 4 got automatically qualified: 3. SethPera, 4. SavinPera. All matches and results.
Qualifier round 3, 3 May. 58 players. Top 2: 1. j-tan, 2. SethPera. Third came AlbertoMuniz and because SethPera had already qualified 4. Tostifabriek qualified together with j-tan. Two players from The Netherlands. All matches and results.
Qualifier round 4, 17 May. 49 players. Top 2: 1. delriver, 2. Klemtonius. Third place was Macfry and as such he together with Klemtonius automatically qualified. All matches and results.
Based on their total accumulated CAGP point 8 more players were added. For the finals one player withdrew to join another event and Alberto would not participate in the finals as he was doing live video commentary with Matthew. Click below for the recorded video of the finals.
The knock-out finals played on 31 May started thus with 16 players, each player playing once with white and once with black. After the first round most of the players who had qualified through AGP points were out. In the semi-finals we had two players from Hong Kong paired against each other and one from Spain (former Caissa coach CM David Rivas) and one from The Netherlands facing off.
In the match for 3rd place delriver beat illuminatitriangle with 2-1 and in the finals Tostifabriek beat local youth aplayer227 (aka Gerent) with 2-0. Well done still Gerent, 2nd place! And congrats to Tostifabriek who is our first CAGP Champion.
Thanks to all players, local and from overseas, for your participation and sportsmanship!
