Malaysia loses round 4

In round four of the on-going Istanbul Olympiad, Malaysia met another strong team, Finland. This time we lost badly.

Mok held another 2600+ grandmaster to a draw. He has a great chance to make a grandmaster norm if he keeps this up.

IM Lim Yee Weng made several mistakes and his opponent made sure he could never recover. Yee Weng who had good chances to make a GM norm will have to hope that the team does well enough to meet strong teams for him to regain any chance.

Yeoh Li Tian is not performing as well as expected. In all three of his games he had chances of winning or drawing but he lost them all. Here is the round four example.



 White has sacrificed a pawn for attacking chances. Black just played 31....Qe4? allowing 32. Nxc7! Qxb4 33. Nxa6+ Kb7 34. Nxb4 with an extra pawn for white. Li Tian missed this tactical shot and went on to lose









In this complicated position, I was down a pawn but white's knight is trapped. I played  17...Ng4? with the idea of ...Nge5 trapping the knight on a8. I missed white's threat 18. Nc6! The white knight cannot be captured as 18....bxc6 19. Ba6 mates. Meanwhile the threat of Nxa7 was hard to meet.

I ended up playing 18...Bb6 19. Nxb6 axb6. and white had the two bishops and an extra pawn. I defended till move 100 but the extra pawn was too much.