Surprise meltdown

Across the South China Sea from the peninsula, the one big event that occupies the minds of the local chess players is the Sarawak open which is organised annually by the Sarawak Chess Association.

This year, the FIDE-rated event received an added boost when a small number of foreign participants decided to cross over to Kuching from the Penang heritage city open event that had finished two days earlier.

Thus, it was of interest this time to see a few players from India, the Philippines, Singapore, Germany and Japan in the largely Malaysian field.

The Indian international master, Lahiri Atanu, had looked set to run away with the first prize but instead, his form suffered from a late meltdown.

His misfortune started in the seventh round of the competition when he found himself at the losing end of his game with a Singaporean player, Andre Jerome Eng. From a position of strength – he was leading the rest of the field by half a point – two players had leapfrogged him as the new tournament leaders and suddenly, he was half a point behind them. 

At this stage of the tournament, there were only two rounds left to play: the eighth and the ninth rounds. For Lahiri, the eighth round would have to be a do-or-die effort. He would have to win this vital game if there was to be any chance of reclaiming his lead in the event. 

However his opponent, Wong Jianwen, had other ideas. Wong, who was as our first board junior player at the recent world youth under-16 Olympiad in Turkey, refused to buckle and continued to cause problems to the Indian international master in a delicate queen and pawn endgame. Wong had his chance when all of a sudden, Lahiri blundered into a checkmate in one move. 

If Lahiri’s loss in the seventh round came as a surprise to all the participants, his unexpected loss in the eighth round was equivalent to a shock. It was quite unreal for an experienced tournament leader to suffer two losses in consecutive rounds. 

Although the main beneficiary of Lahiri’s bad luck was Eng, there were now seven other players who had climbed above the Indian in the standings with only one final round to play. 

Definitely, Lahiri was out of contention not only for the first and second prizes but perhaps the third and fourth prizes too. The event was wide open and anyone from among the top eight players could now win it.

Eng decided to play it safe and he took a draw with Wong in the final round. In other key games that finished soon afterwards, Benjamin Foo, another player from Singapore, beat Thomas Bueder from Germany while Kamaluddin Yusof had an inspired game to overcome Efren Bagamasbad from the Philippines.

These results meant that Eng and Foo would finish with equal points at the top of the standings. However, there was another surprise in the tournament as the tie-break system awarded the first prize to Foo and the second prize to Eng. Wong was third and Kamaluddin fourth. Lahiri won his ninth round game to take the fifth prize. 

I should also be mentioning here that over the last three months, the Persatuan Catur Negeri Kelantan had successfully organised its first Fide-rated tournament. 

Twelve players participated in this round-robin event which was won by Abdul Haq Mohamed with Nik Ahmad Farouqi finishing second. 

What I liked about their format was that the organisers managed to hold the games over two venues in Kuala Lumpur and Kelantan. Mainly, this was meant to overcome the logistics of getting enough Fide-rated players to play in Kelantan. 

   

Up next

National junior

The fourth national junior chess championships for boys and girls are now taking place at the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre in the Wilayah Complex, Jalan Munshi Abdullah, Kuala Lumpur. The event started on Monday and today is actually the final day of competition. Altogether, there are 54 boys and 22 girls playing in the two events.