Category: Uncategorized

As of 18 August 2021 (Note: Highlighted Names are Participants Registered for Racial Harmony Team)

Note to Participants : Please join the Championship Lichess Team and Tournament by 19 August. Do check your email for Zoom meeting details.

Tournament Schedule –
– 1.15pm : Participants Check-in to Zoom & Technical Setup Checks
– 1.30pm : Welcome & Opening Address
– 1.45pm : Technical Briefing & Announcements by Chief Arbiter
– 2.00pm : Start of Round 1
– 5.00pm : Announcements & Closing Remarks

Please email [email protected] if you have any enquiries or you noticed any discrepancies on the list. Thank you.

PRIVATE PAGE FOR CHAMPIONSHIP PARTICIPANTS ONLY

Dear Challengers,

Below are some administrative notes and steps on how to join the Championship for your reference – especially for players who are new to online chess competition on lichess.org.  For those who are familiar, thank you for your patience.  We hope you will still read through the notes below with care.

A) Re-cap : Tournament Details:

• Format – 11 Rounds Individual Swiss on lichess.org
• Start Time : Round 1 will start sharp at 2.00pm
• Time Control : 3 min/ 2 seconds increments per move from move 1 
• NOTE:  
  • There is no predetermined start time for each round (except for Round 1).  
  • Time interval between rounds is 3 minutes ie the next round will begin promptly 3 minutes from the end of the last game of the previous round.  You will be able to see the number of active games in the round (Fig 1 below) and the count-down time to start of next round on the upper right hand corner of the tournament page Fig 2.
  • Please be ready 1 minute to start of new game.

Fig 1 – Showing number of remaining active games in the Round

Fig 2 – Showing count down timer to start of next Round

B) KICKOFF 2021 Championship Programme – 9 January 2021

1.15pm – 1.30pm : Participant’s Check-in to Zoom Meeting [Refer to email for Zoom Meeting details] and login to lichess. org account.
1.30pm – 1.40pm : Technical Briefing & Rules, Prizes Updates by Chief Arbiter
1.40pm – 1.55pm : Join GM Kevin Goh Live on Twitch.TV for Opening Address by Dr Ang Hak Seng, Chairman, Yuhua CC Management Committee & Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Culture, Community & Youth.
1.55pm -1.59pm : Players prepare to start Round 1. Players to stay on the Zoom meeting throughout Championship for announcements & communications with arbiters.
2.00pm : Start of Round1
4.30pm : Estimated end time of Championship. Players to to Zoom meeting
4.30-4.45pm : Lucky Draw, Results and Closing.

C) HOW and WHERE to Join the CHAMPIONSHIP
Step 1 – Join the dedicated lichess team at the URL below.  Please do not wait until the last minute.  

JOIN TEAM at : https://lichess.org/team/kickoff-2021-1st-yuhua-community-sports-club-championships
Do ensure that you join the Team using the same lichess account as in your registration.  Otherwise you will not be admitted into the Championship Team.

Step 2 – Wait for Tournament Coordinators to accept you into the team.  Check your account again by end of the day. If you have not been admitted into the Team by then, please email us. ([email protected])

Step 3 – After admission into the Team, please join the Tournament via this link: https://lichess.org/swiss/b7Sj3FIU or if you are logged in to lichess.org at the Team’s page click on “Tournaments” (refer to red Arrow in Fig 3 below). IMPORTANT :  Please do join the Tournament by Friday, 8th of January 23 59Hrs. 

Fig 3 – Link to Join the Championship tournament. This will bring you to the page as shown on Fig (4).

Fig 4 – Click the green [JOIN] button to confirm your participation in the Kickoff2021 Championship.

Congrats! You have successfully joined the Championship once you see your username reflected on the C’ship start list page.

C) Link to Live Games Commentary by Grandmaster Kevin Goh. Please close this tab/window once when you are playing your game.- https://www.twitch.tv/kevingoh

LATEST! Here are the Prizes List.

Here’s wishing all Challengers and supporters a healthy, safe and purposeful Year 2021! Have an enjoyable Championship.

A good start to our ABC event – 30 participants and many fighting games!
By FM Andrey Terekhov and Maxim Terekhov

The CAC 1st ABC Swiss Event tournament gathered 30 players from Singapore. All of them are advanced beginners or casual players, who have not (yet) attained FIDE rating in standard chess. However, the starting lineup sported impressive ratings on Lichess, with the top players sporting 1800-2000 ratings.

After three rounds of struggle, the top three winners emerged with a perfect record – 3 out of 3. They were separated in the final standings only by the Buchholz tie-breaker.

The winner was Maxim Terekhov, whose opponents sported a perfect record, other than losing their games to him (making for a Buchholz coefficient of 6). In the second place was Kayden Lim, whose tie-break was one point lower, and third place was Harryndran Gunendran of Victoria School, whose tiebreak was 3½.

The winner of the tournament is a 12-year old boy who did not play chess for almost a year and returned only thanks to #ChessAgainstCovid initiative, with his first tournament after a long break being last week’s Chess960 tournament.
In this competition, he played two games out of three with Black. However, at this level the color does not matter much (White won 44% of the games, Black 42% and 9% of the games ended in a draw).
In the first game, the winner played the Two Knights Defense and although the game quickly steered far away from the conventional theory, Black still got a strong initiative for the sacrificed pawn. Around move 30 Black won an exchange thanks to a nice combination and eventually managed to convert it into a victory. In the second game, he won with a direct attack on the enemy king and delivered a checkmate when the opponent blundered on move 20. The last round game was a hard-fought battle in the Queen’s Pawn Opening, in which White missed an intermezzo on move 21 that would have allowed him to maintain the material balance. All games by the champion will be analysed by our resident analysts (FIDE rated juniors).

The runner up, Kayden Lim, was quite lucky in this tournament. In the second round, he was a piece down by move 12, but twenty moves later his opponent blundered this piece back and lost. In the final round, Kayden was again in a difficult position, but posed enough problems for his opponent to lose most of his advantage first and blunder a full queen in one move.

The third placer, Harryndran, started the tournament by outplaying his opponent with Black pieces in the symmetrical endgame of Ruy Lopez. In the second round he won with a ferocious attack in Sicilian Defense. In the final game, Harry went for Two Knights Defense with Black, obtained a winning by move 10 and confidently converted it into a full point.

Here are some tactical positions from the event that you might want to try to solve:

Black to play and gain a serious advantage

Solution: Black to play and gain a serious advantage (Kaydenlim-Haleonix, 1st ABC Swiss 2020). 1….e4! {White is in trouble now} 2. Rf4 (25. Rxe4 Qxe4) 2…exd3 26. Rfe4 Qd6 and Black is one clean pawn up.

Does …Nxe4 work?

Solutions: Does 1…Nxe4 work? (engyeow-sausageham, 1st ABC Swiss 2020). The answer is no because after 12. Bxe7 Nxc3 13. bxc3 {Oops. White goes a piece up after this.} Qxe7 14. cxd4 exd4, Black is winning.

White to play and win a pawn (takes a few moves)

Solution: White to play and win a pawn (sausageham-crazybunbun, 1st ABC Swiss 2020). 1. Qb3+! Kh8 2.cxd4 cxd4 3.Qc4 and the d4-pawn cannot be saved.

White to play and win a piece

Solution: White to play and win a piece (engyeow-magicalrabbit, 1st ABC Swiss). 1.e5! dxe5 2.fxe5 and the knight has nowhere safe to go.

Do sign up at https://tinyurl.com/SimulYoungMasters

Hope to see you there ☺️