On Monday the 19 November 2018, for the very first time under a new format, the four HSPA 2018 Primary and Secondary School Chess Championships were contested and decided.
The Green Room in the Theatre proved an ideal location to accommodate a record number of participants for our Internal School Chess competitions - 30 students!
The move to the new format of determining all of our Titles in a single whole day event proved very successful and allowed us to free up time for a little more coaching across Term 2 and 3 and escape the impact of backlogged matches and forfeits due to performance commitments.
Without having to rely on incoming Sydney Chess organisers arbiters - and with the help of a free online Chess pairings tool - Mr Bon was able to manage to run 2 concurrent 7 round Swiss tournaments. There were separate events for Primary and Secondary participants.
The match of the day was Simon Gordon's (Y10) Houdini like escape to clutch an unlikely victory from the jaws of defeat by Oskar Sutherland (Y9) to secure the coveted "A" Grade Title.
Many other fine battles were witnessed and the tight margins between players meant a number of jointly shared titles too. The Girls Champion title was shared by Irene Seo (Y9) and Ka'yil Shaw (Y12). We wish Ka'yil all the very best in the future and thank her for valuable help over the years, as we do for Aaron Lyall (Y12) who shared the Open Grade title with Oscar McGill (Y8).
Aaron's first ever title was a very fitting parting reward for this longest serving HSPA chess stalwart since we resurrected the old HSPA Chess Club in 2013.
The Primary Championship was also a split decision going to two very well performed players: Nolan Sobel-Read and Tristan Bates Saunders.
Congratulations to all of our new title holders!!!
The Perpetual Trophies are already with the engravers in preparation for our big Pizza and Pieces presentation day early in 2019. Each Perpetual Trophy winner will also receive their own personal little trophy to keep.
A big Thank You to all of the people around the school that constantly support chess as they do and help to make such events possible for all of our budding young HSPA chess enthusiasts.
Mr Bonjekovic - HSPA Chess
Copyright for this website is owned by the State of New South Wales through the Department of Education. For more information go to http://www.dec.nsw.gov.au/footer/copyright.
