Saturday, September 18, 2010

2010 Chess Olympiad (Part 1)


The World Chess Olympiad 2010 is around the corner. Held in Khanty-Mansiysk, almost 1400 chess players will take part in the 39th edition. GiLoCatur would like to start the coverage of the event (hopefully GiLoCatur can make a decent coverage ...) by looking into the players that will represent MALAYSIA and its neighbouring ASEAN countries.

The Malaysian Men's team is seeded 84th in this 39th Chess Olympiad with ELO average of 2325. As per in the above table, Malaysia is spearheaded by IM Mas. He and IM Mok, who was FM then, are the only team members of the last Chess Olympiad held in Dresden, Germany. For record, 2010 Chess Olympiad will be the sixth appearance for IM Mas since 1994 and the eighth appearance for IM Mok since 1990.

IM Yee Weng, who made his maiden appearance in the Chess Olympiad in 1996 and was on the second board in the last Olympiad, would not be around this time. The other members of the Malaysian Chess Olympiad team are FM Peter Long, Tan Khai Boon, the 2010 National Master, and MCF Secretary, Greg Lau.



The best seeded ASEAN country is Vietnam at 29th rank with ELO ratings average of 2587. It has two 2600-club GMs in Le Quang Liem and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son. Can Vietnam make ASEAN proud by being in the top 10? Let's wait and see.


The other chess superpower ASEAN country is the Phillippines. We hope GM Wesley So will lead his country to be among the top 20 in the 39th Olympiad. His country is seeded 38th with ELO ratings average of 2552.



Just participated in the World University Chess Championship recently, GM Susanto Megaranto is Indonesia's hope to put up excellent performance in this chess olympiad. Making his fifth appearance, surely he will make sure his country to better its 66th seed with average ratings of 2423.



Singapore which has average ELO ratings of 2393 and seeded 70th out of almost 160 participating teams is led by GM Zhang Zhong. Will Singapore has better placings than Malaysia in the chess olympiad? Or can Malaysia perform well and get better results than Singapore? The answers will be known after the chess olympiad is over.



Thailand is the only ASEAN country that is seeded lower than Malaysia. It is seeded 92nd with ratings average of 2256. But bear in mind that Thailand had beaten Malaysian 2.5-1.5 in one of the last chess olympiads. Do you know which one is that?

To be in the top 10 will be too ambitious and very high expectation for our Malaysian team. What GiLoCatur hopes and expects from the team are :

1) Every player should achieve ELO performance that is higher or better than his current ELO ratings.

2) Every player should achieve more than 50% of winnings.

3) The team should win between 60th to 70th final standings.

Are the above expectations and hope too high or hard to attain?

ANYWAY, GILOCATUR WOULD LIKE TO WISH BEST OF LUCK TO OUR MALAYSIAN CHESS TEAM IN THE CHESS OLYMPIAD. MAKE OUR NATION PROUD! PUT YOUR HEART OUT TO PERFORM WELL. MALAYSIA BOLEH!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see how newly crowned IM Daniel Fernandez will perform on Board 2 for Singapore.
2 years ago, exactly prior to Olympiad 2008, he was not doing so well in Kuching (you were there too Gilocatur!); and now he's already playing Board 2 for his country.

GiLoCatur said...

i will be looking at his performance too.

yeap, i was there in Kuching too. and i may know what's the reason for that hehehe ..

i believe his development and training is being taken care of. from my observation, his father is very dedicated and hardworking in nurturing and ensuring daniel howard in chess. i believe singapore chess federation plays its role too ...