For these winners from the ISF Academy Chess Open, practice is their winning move

Difficulty: Challenger (Level 2)

In a game of intense concentration, young chess players in Hong Kong are showing how practice pays off.

The annual ISF Academy Chess Open was held in March. Beating 61 other competitors, 15-year-old Thanneermalai Kannappan won first place in the secondary school section. Chloe Lau, who is 11, won first place among the girls in the category.

Thanneermalai, a student at West Island School, said he was able to stay calm in the competition. “Sometimes I feel pressure,” he said. “But I’ve gotten used to ... it since I’ve played a lot of tournaments.”

Chloe, who ranked 12th overall in the category, was surprised by her win. “I thought I was not going to win anything,” she recalled. “I was about to leave, and then when they announced that I got best female, I just started running back.”

Manuel Gomez is a grandmaster – the highest ranking in chess – from Spain and has taught Chloe and Thanneermalai. Besides teaching strategy, Gomez also stresses the importance of learning how to fail.

“Sometimes you have to deal with loss, with very tense moments,” he explained. “To recover from that moment, a player ... really needs good passion for the game because if they don’t, it’s really easy for them to get frustrated and just give up.”

Chloe Lau has only been playing chess for about a year. Photo: Kathryn Giordano

A family game

Thanneermalai began learning the game when he was five. He was under the tutelage of his mother, who represented Hong Kong in the Chess Olympiad in 2016 and 2022.

In 2023, he ranked second at the national junior selections. But because the first-place player was not available, Thanneermalai represented Hong Kong in the 2023 FIDE World Youth U16 Chess Olympiad in the Netherlands.

“They ... gave me a chance,” he recalled. The group’s finish was one of Hong Kong’s best performances in the annual competition, as they ranked 43rd out of 63 teams.

With his secondary school exams looming, Thanneermalai has less time to practise. “But I keep trying because I like chess a lot. I would always try to make time for it ... Chess is worth going through.”

Practice makes perfect

Chloe spends much of her free time playing chess with her little brother Clayton, who won first place in the lower primary category. She only started learning the game a year ago, so the South Island School student practises for 15 hours every week.

“I can do my schoolwork during the day and then just do chess after dinner,” she said, adding that her main reason for practising is so that she can beat her brother.

Last year, Chloe won best female in the upper primary category. So she decided to challenge herself in March’s competition by joining the secondary category. “I wanted to test my abilities,” she said.

Although she hasn’t been playing chess for very long, Chloe has high goals, such as joining the Hong Kong national team and eventually becoming a titled player.

Use the puzzle below to test your knowledge of the vocabulary words in the story.

Suggested answers

• Stop and think: Chess players should learn how to fail because it will help them recover and persevere.

• Think about it: He got that chance because he ranked second at the national junior selections and the first-place player was unavailable.

• Consider: Chloe joined the secondary category because she had already won best female in the upper primary category, and she wanted to challenge herself.