Round 4: Another loss for Malaysia

Malaysia paired against a slightly stronger team in Guatemala lost narrowly by 1.5-2.5. The points came from Aron Teh who won on second board and Fong Yit San who drew on third. This was not the expected result after two hours of play when it looked like Malaysia could win the match.

Both Yit San and Aron had the better positions after the openings. Playing on the white side of a Grunfeld Defence, Aron sacrificed a pawn in the opening and obtained an over-whelming position. He neatly wrapped up with a mating attack.

Yit San was a clear pawn up and a win was to be expected here. His opponent set up a few problems for him which he never managed to solve. Despite maintaining his extra pawn in a rook ending, it ended in a theoretical draw.

Yee Weng had a slighly worse rook endgame. He made the mistake of playing passively and was ground down.

Fadzil was a strange game. Instead of playing the normal b3, a3 and b4 advance on the queen-side he choose to play on the king-side 15. f4. This is not bad but he followed up with some aimless moves or maybe he was just waiting to see what would happen on the other boards. His opponent cleverly opened up the king-side and saddled him with serious black square weaknesses and he never recovered.


This loss dropped Malaysia to 129th position. The good thing is that when you hit rock bottom there is no other way but up. Malaysia will play Saudi Arabia in the 5th round. This should be an easy win.