Round 6 report by Tournament Director Philip Chan
After 6 rounds, the big names in the ASEAN Chess Championship now taking place in Singapore at the 7th Singapore International Chess Festival 2010 continued their winning form.
GM Zurab Azmaiparashvili, now a Singapore Permanent Resident and donning Singapore colours and who originally hails from Georgia continue to front the tournament despite the no show of GM Le Quang Liem and Nguyen Ngoc Troung Son from Vietnam. He leads the table into the tournament with 5.0 points after dropping half a point each to FM Nguyen Duc Hua from Vietnam in Round 2 and Indonesian GM Megaranto in the 5th round.
Out of big time action for a while, you can bet he will deliver the results in due course. Just half a point away sits 'Pinoy' IM Oliver Barbosa and 4 others chasing the front pack. These include Vietnam’s IM Nguyen Van Hai and GM Dao Thien Hai and also Filipinos IMs Steven Yap and Richard Bitoon.
GM Zurab Azmaiparashvili on the top board
The ASEAN Women Championships has the Vietnamese women in the driving seats with WGM Nguyen Thi Than An leading with 5 points and half a point behind are WGM Le Thanh Tu and WIM Nguyen Thi Mai Hung. Indonesian’s darling WGM Irine Sukandar Kharis looks jaded after a long season dropping points to WGM Nguyen Thi Thanh An and Vietnam champion WIM Nguyen Thi Mai Hung.
Singapore’s best bet WFM Jeslin Tay is finding it tough keeping up with the ‘professionals’ and she is 2 points away from the lead in ninth position.
White knight in shining armour, GM Wen Yang from China is unstoppable in the Singapore Open winning all his games and is expected to continue his winning run. The very experienced and seasoned IM Gokhale Chandrashekar from India is one point behind in second place and just marginally half a point ahead of 8 other players including Andre Jerome Eng from Singapore andGM Villamayor Buenaventura from the Philippines who is a trainer with a local company.
Possibly one of the richest youth age group tournament (in term of cash awards) around the region, the inaugural Singapore International Youth Championships have foreign participants threatening to run away with all the age group titles. In the Open Under 8, Singaporean Alfred Chua and Cyrus Low Zhen Yu are just half a point behind leader Wong Yinn Long from Malaysia.
Krystal Valerie Soh and Steffi Lim Yan Yu are currently the only Singaporeans helming the top 2 position in the Girls Under 8 section whilst FM Tin Jinyao has maximum points from the first six rounds in the Open Under 11 and like GM Wen Yang in the Singapore Open looks unstoppable. In the Girls’ Under 14, Yuan Wei Ting and WFM Raja Jawahar Monisha are hoping to prevent the foreign field from having a free run.
Report by Tournament Director Philip Chan
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