Friday, March 21, 2014

Thrown game revealed

I read Mr Raymond "Once we taught China" Siew that there was a thrown game at the recent Nationals. He fails to reveal any names but confirmed that this player has previous "questionable practices".

"Questionable practices"? This brought my mind immediately to Mark Siew's previous cheating scandal in 2011. Then I remembered his round eight game. Let me describe this game.

Mark had queen and knight hounding his opponent's king on h1 with mate imminent. After long thought, his opponent desperately played the h-pawn to h4 to get some breathing space for his king. Now instead of mating, Mark captured this pawn thus allowing his opponent some breathing space and time. Mark's position was still so strong that a few moves later he had to win a piece. Furthermore, the opponent's king is now chased to the centre of the board. With Q+R+N against a naked king, it is quite impossible not to mate. But what happened next?

Mark gave back the knight for nothing. In fact, he played a move that forced his opponent to capture the knight (only move). Then he forced the exchange of the remaining pieces into a lost pawn ending for him. This gift propelled his opponent to the top boards in the last round.

All this is on record and many players were watching this game. The circumstantial evidence is just too over-whelming. It is clear MCF should investigate this incident. Thanks for highlighting this, Raymond.

3 comments:

Peter Long said...

Like Father, Like Son?

Anonymous said...

We also discovered from his 10 March 2014 entry why the dude can't play chess for nuts - he never introspect la...

Anonymous said...

Jimmy needs to get this monkey off his back.... Jimmy can settle as a role model and take on a role as a national coach - subject to MCF getting its act together and paying well for Jimmy's services.

As a side note, has MCF signed its support to Kasparov's team through Leong and Asean Chess Academy Pte Ltd? If so, MCF can demand USD 50,000 and use it as chess development budget :)

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