Regional Chess Tournament 2022

On Sunday last week our Chess players participated in the NZ Chess Federation Secondary Schools Regional tournament. The winning school earns the right to represent Waikato in the National inter-schools tournament to be played during the upcoming school holidays.

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 NZ Nationals to be played, this year, in Christchurch.