Hamilton Chess Club

September 29th-30th 2018 – Interschools National Finals, Mt Maunganui.

Two hundred and fifty students and at least 80 anxious parents and teachers travelled to Mount Maunganui for NZCF’s annual NZ Interschool Chess Finals on 29th and 30th September. The 60 school teams had all won their regional tournaments or been awarded one of a handful of “wildcard” spots. The finals were organised and run by at Mt Maunganui College by Bob and Viv Smith, with the help of members of the Mount Chess Club.

Seedings – always a bit of a guess at school level – proved remarkably accurate in the secondary and primary championships, with top seeds Macleans College and Pinehurst School (both from Auckland) convincing winners.

But seventh seeds Berkley Middle School (Hamilton) pulled off an upset in the intermediate division, finishing ahead of more fancied rivals.

The medal winning schools and team compositions were:

Primary

1st Pinehurst School    Felix Xie, Kenny Zhang, Ryan Fan, Allen Weng, Nicholas Xu

2nd Willow Park School  Matthew Chen, Emma Zhuang, Eddie Kim, Chenchen Wang, Wyatt Liu

3rd Eastern Hutt School Paul He, Ben Guo, Zac Li, Shaasthin Nithyananthan

Intermediate

1st Berkley Middle School   Lasen Silva, Aidan Morgan, Daniel Loy, Cam Sundararaj

2nd Murrays Bay Int     Andrew Li, Allen Li, Nathan Jin, Andy Song

3rd Mt Roskill Int      Nico McKinlay, Renae Ghadiali, Saasha Ghadiali, Adam Ali, Saahir Saheb

Secondary

1st Macleans College    Richard Jiang, Terry Shen, Judd Zhan, Kevin Guan, Oliver Dai

2nd Auckland Grammar    Allen Fan, Aaron Wang, James Liu, Nicholas Huang

3rd King’s College      Darrick Pan, Brian Qi, Ryan Nguyen, Fia Fa’afuhia

Club resume on 16th October

The graded robin last night was a success with 28 players in 7 divisions competing. Richard and Ruchira top scored in their respective divisions winning all three games. We will have another graded robin next term. Ratings tables have been updated.

Divison 1

Divison 2

Divison 3

Divison 4

Divison 5

Divison 6

Divison 7

We will have a graded Robin of three games with groups of four players based on your current club ranking next week. Time control will be 20 + 0. Don’t be late because once the groups are set I cant go back and remake them all.

We will have six rounds of blitz next week, time control 5 + 5 which is a departure from our usual blitz of 5 + 3. Dont be late. Non-members welcome