Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Round 9: Leaders clash

At the Tromso Olympiad in Norway, two leaders have emerged at the pen-ultimate round with 15 match points. China will play against France in what may be a gold medal match.

A few teams are still in contention for medals amongst them are one of the favourites Ukraine currently a point behind. Ukraine meets another 14 pointer, Azerbaijan.

Malaysia team continues with a good run  by drawing the higher rated Tajikistan 2-2. Both the bottom boards won. Fadzil had the good fortune of winning a piece after his opponent blundered in the early middle-game. Fong Yit San's impressive victory over IM Jamshed Isaev gave Malaysia the other point.

Malaysia has reached 11 match points , just one short of the points obtained in the last Olympiad. With two more rounds to go, the current team have good chances of improving. However in this 10th round, the team has to deal with a strong Swiss team. We have met Switzerland in Khanty-Mansiysk 2010 scoring one point and also at Turin 2006 where we scored a shock 2.5-1.5, IM Mas beating GM Korchnoi on the first board.

At time of writing the games are in progress and it is still too early to predict what will happen.

0 comments:

Post a Comment