1st School Chess Table Tennis Tournament at the Polgar Grammar School Vienna 22
Almost 50 pupils took part in the premiere event organised by Lothar Handrich, the regional advisor for school chess in Vienna and chess teacher at Polgargymnasium Wien 22 (Die Polgarspringer) for 20 years.
Chess table tennis is a combination competition that includes a table tennis tournament and a chess tournament. It is very similar to the Nordic combined event from winter sports.
“The motivation for this event was to offer chess players the opportunity to combine their favourite sport with an exercise-intensive sport. At the same time, table tennis players should be able to show their talent in chess,” explains Lothar Handrich with satisfaction.
The event was a great success for the participants from the Polgargymnasium, the BRG 22 Theodor-Kramer and the BRG Heustadlgasse, as the many enthusiastic faces during the individual competitions and especially at the final award ceremony showed.
Both the coaches and all the athletes agreed at the joint farewell: “We have to repeat something this cool as soon as possible!
The Top 6: Overall winner with 10 points from 10 games Tizian Peraus (Polgargymnasium), 9,5 points Mihail Grecu 2nd place (Theodor-Kramer), 9 points Leonie Peraus 3rd place, (Polgargymnasium) 8 points Aidan Wickramasinghe 4th place (Heustadelgasse), 7,5 points Nathaniel Wickramsinghe 5th place (Heustadelgasse)
5 rounds of chess and 5 rounds of table tennis were played according to the Swiss system. The Swiss system is a competition format in which all participants play in each round against an opponent who has a similar number of winning points. The Swiss system thus makes it possible to play against opponents with similar playing strength and thus ensure a balanced competition. In order to emphasise direct comparison, the tournament mode was modified so that all participants could compete directly against each other in both chess and table tennis.
