Chess Club 2022

Captain: Nathanael Loy

Senior Champion: Michael Lin

Junior Champion: Aarya Vivekanandan

First Team Players: Michael Lin, Nathanael Loy, Andy Song, Daniel Loy, Jovan Xin, Nathan Ludlow, Khan Li Henry, and Lasen Silva.

After the huge disruptions caused by COVID-19, it was good to once again be able to play over-the-board Chess. Despite the lengthy pause in inter-school matches our teams dominated local events and maintained a high standard at National tournaments. These results were recorded despite our first team frequently being weakened by the unavailability of top players due to COVID.

Hosted by Napier Boys’ High School this year, Super 8 was our first event of the post-COVID era. Missing our top player, Michael, we still managed a win to take our number of wins to six out of eight Super 8 Tournaments since 2014.

The Waikato High Schools Tournament was another that was affected by last-minute withdrawals with our team changing for the third time only an hour before the first round commenced. Our first place was our 11th successive Waikato Championship win, and earned us a place in the National Tournament in Christchurch, where we were placed joint 7th, from a seeding of 11, out of the 21 regions competing.

Chess Power events provide a different slant to traditional Chess with faster time controls, guillotine finishes and teams playing opponents from various teams in the same round. Our two teams managed to win, and come second in the regional competition and qualified to have six players in the National team finals. Our trip to Rotorua was a very successful outing with HBHS winning the team event and bringing home the Champions Trophy. Not only did we win the team gold medals, but Michael Lin was placed first in New Zealand and Lasen Silva third. Thus ended a very successful year.

In conclusion I would like to pay tribute to two young men who have been part of the first team for the past five years. Nathanael Loy, our 2022 Captain, has not only played excellent Chess and been an important part of the team, but his administrative ability, desire to help with organisation, coaching and reporting on events has set a standard successive captains will find difficult to maintain. We thank him and wish him well. Michael Lin has been our strongest player for the past two years but his contribution has extended far further than just winning consistently, and has included coaching of juniors and tournament director duties. Michael has played in the Chess Power Nationals for the past four years, both representing HBHS and playing in the individual tournaments. In all these, Michael has won five times, each time earning the gold medal and the Power Chess Junior Master title, in itself a New Zealand record. We congratulate and thank Michael and hope he will continue with Chess in the years to come. 

Chess Power Secondary Schools National Championships

Our HBHS Chess team successfully defended their National title, in a tournament contested in Rotorua over Labour Weekend.

The team travelled to Rotorua to defend the National Power Chess title we won online last year in a COVID-affected tournament. It was great to be able to play over-the-board again this year.

We qualified, through the regional elimination process, to take a team of six. As always, the sum of the top four scores would be our team score.

Michael Lin had another outstanding tournament with his score of 8½ out of 9 being the highest on the day. Lasen Silva scored 7 points to be placed 3rd. Nathan Ludlow on 6 ½ and Nathanael Loy on 6 rounded off the four players whose scores contributed to our total of 28, earning us the gold medals and title of National Champions. Mt Albert Grammar won the silver medals with 24 points and Mt Roskill was third on 23 points. It is interesting to note that our 5th and 6th players, Andy Song and Khan Li Henry, scored so well that we would still have won if we had needed to use their results as part of our total.

An excellent achievement and congratulations to all our Chess players.

Regional Chess Tournament 2022

In August our Chess players participated in the New Zealand Chess Federation Secondary Schools Regional tournament. The winning school earns the right to represent Waikato in the National inter-schools tournament.

Faced with what promised to be strong opposition from at least two of the ten teams entered, HBHS were weakened by two of our four A team players having to go into enforced COVID isolation less than 36 hours before the start of the tournament. Some quick phone calls and emails ensured strong replacements were found. The problems did not end there as an hour before the start of the tournament, a further withdrawal from the A team presented further problems.

Fortunately, in recent years, our strength has been in our depth and the replacements played outstandingly well.

Our A Team of Michael Lin, Andy Song, Khan Li Henry, and Nathan Ludlow played excellent chess and won the tournament convincingly, ending on 10/10. Our B team consisting of Jacob Porter, Lasen Silva, Ishaan Singh, and Aarya Vivekanandan performed way above their ranking and ended with 8/10, losing only to our A team (by a margin of 2¹/₂ vs 1¹/₂ ) to be placed 2nd.

By winning this tournament, HBHS again won the right to represent the Waikato Secondary schools in the New Zealand Nationals to be played, this year, in Christchurch.