2024 Kāpiti Open
Congratulations to Cohen Young who took out the 2024 Kāpiti Open last weekend with an impressive unbeaten 6 wins from 6.
It was a beautiful, crisp, cloudless June day in Raumati, and despite a number of late withdrawals due to the current Covid mini-wave in the region, the 30th running of this regional event drew a good field of 45 players.
In the A grade, key wins from Cohen over Layla Timergazi in Round 4 and Nicholas Winsley in Round 5 saw him unbeaten going into the final round, with chasers a full point behind. A loss could see both Layla and Nicolas catch him for first. However, all three won their final round clashes – to see them take out the placings in the A grade.
The B grade was also tightly contested, with three players sharing first on 4 points: Lucas Qu, Daniel Winsley and Abhinand Rajendran, with a further 4 players just half a point behind. Check out Lucas’s Round 2 win over past Open winner Michael Nyberg in the links.
The C grade was also well contested and saw a five-way tie for first. Congratulations to Brock Clement, Jin Tan, Zachery He, Roy MaKay and James Patterson. Great to see local Kāpiti juniors Brock, James and Roy in the placings.
Congratulations to David Paul who took home the Flora Paul Cup again as top placed Kāpiti Club member on 4½ points and 4th= overall along with past Kāpiti member Geoffrey Gunawan.
It was great to see a fantastic turnout of juniors – and some serious future talent. Age group winners were:
14+: 1st, Cohen Young2nd=, Ollie Archer and Luke Chang
10-13: 1st= Lucas Qu, Abhinand Rajendran
Under 10’s: John Hao, Vrajesh Ravi, Jacob He and Minh Long Le.
Special mention also of the new playing venue at Te Raukura, the Kāpiti Performing Arts Centre. This was a wonderful setting to play Chess, and our thanks go to the excellent and professional support staff that helped the day run smoothly. Special thanks also to local company Dark Horse Coffee who kindly sponsored us with some of their great product, and special thanks also to Kāpiti Coast District Council who provided us financial support for the event. And finally, many thanks to organiser and director Gordon Lyall, and his wife Andrea, and other club members that supported the event.
Full results can be found here
Photos and videos of the day here
The vega link above also has the pgn’s of all 36 games from the top 6 boards which were played on electronic boards kindly provided by the NZCF.