Saturday, August 22, 2009

DATMO 2009 Round 1 Observations

Usually the first rounds are quite easy. This was not so when I walked around to observe the games. Most of the top seeds had to work for their point.

Some surprise results were:

WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan managed to hold Filipino GM Darwin Laylo to a draw. The women grandmaster was literally down to her last five seconds while Laylo had some thirty minutes. Despite her king being caught in an uncomfortable position on the edge of the board, she managed to find some good defensive moves. After ninety plus moves, it cane down to N+P versus B+P. Laylo decided to call it a day.

Yeoh Li Tian drew with FM Duc Hoa Nguyen from a winning position despite having loads of time on the clock as opposed to his opponent who was down to 2-3 minutes. This kid cannot be understimated.

Yee Weng started the tournament badly with a loss to a lesser opponent.

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