Fast and furious chess action

Friday November 14, 2008
Olympiad begins
CHESSBy QUAH SENG SUN

International chess events continue to come at us fast and furious.

WHO says chess moves along at a slow pace? No sooner did the world chess championship end than another event has started. This time, it is the biennial Chess Olympiad.

This year’s Olympiad is being played in Dresden, Germany. The second round is being played today. The 11-round event started yesterday and will go on until Nov 25.

The Malaysian Chess Federation has not submitted any team for the women’s Chess Olympiad but we have a men’s team participating in the open Olympiad (previously called the men’s Chess Olympiad).

Two of our international masters are on the Malaysian team: Mas Hafizulhelmi and Jimmy Liew. the most senior of our five players.
The “baby” in the team is Edward Lee, this year’s national champion. This trip may be his reward for coming out tops in the national closed championship but I hope he acquits himself well in Dresden. He’ll be the reserve player though, so most of the responsibilities will fall on the shoulders of the others.

This will be a good opportunity for Mas Hafizulhelmi to continue his search for a grandmaster title norm. Dresden will also provide good opportunities for Mok Tze Meng and Lim Yee Weng to go after their international master title norms, too. If the team line-up is based on the players’ international ratings, which is usually the case, then Liew will be playing on the fourth board. This man has an immense playing experience and even though he may not be playing as strongly as before, he should still be the stabilising force in the team.

So how do you think our team will fare this year? First, we have to set our expectations straight. We are by no means a top seeded team. Indeed, based on the team seedings, we just made it into the top half of the table. This year, with 156 participating teams, we are seeded 74th. So if our team plays according to the expectation, they shall be expected to finish somewhere between 70th and 80th positions. I would say anything above 70th position will be a big bonus to the players.

Curiously, the Malaysian team is seeded higher than the Singaporean team in this Chess Olympiad. According to the official statistics, we are seeded 74th because the average rating of the Malaysian players is 2362. The Singapore team is at 2346 and seeded four rungs below.

Here is the full article.