The playing Hall at OFS The 75th National School's Individuals 2024 created a record of 1606 registered entries, such that it was necessary to host the event over 2 venues. The Secondary U14-16 sections were held at Senja Cashew CC ( the original venue) while the other Primary Sections and the U-20 were at Overseas Family School. This year saw record numbers in the U08, U10 and U12 sections with the U12 totalling 465 players, the U10 with 380. The tiebreaks were able to determine the Champion of each section where both the Open and Girls were competing together. For each age-category, 10 Zonal prizes were awarded to the North,South,East,West clusters as well as the non-MOE International Schools. The U20 was won by Charlene Mak being the first woman to dominate the U20 Open section. Other interesting finishes was the 2nd U20 placing won by Yu Kaiyi from Compassvale Primary who skipped the U12 to play higher. My ex-students Ryan and Daniel Chan with Leonard Loh also played in the
As in past editions, the Hong Kong International Open is held at the St. Benedict's School Hall in Choi Hung district over the Christmas holiday period from 24th - 29th December this year. Looking at the starting list, it is heartening to see the numbers increase from 80 in 2018 (when I last visited) to 176 participants, with the main bulk of players from Singapore contributing about 30 players and another 54 from China. This year 14 titled players competed, notably 3 GMs, 3 IMs, 1 WIM, 6 FMs and 1 CM. Another feature of this tournament was the introduction of recording games into a tablet which was linked to the Lichess live broadcast, in place of the DGT equipment which was cumbersome to set up. We could follow the course of the first 60 games played when the system was running smoothly from round 5. 3 of my students played in it upon my recommendation, skipping the Penang Open which we had been to many times. I was encouraging them to gain exposure by playing different player