I DON’T know which is the greater frustration, the inability to get a fast connection to the official website of the Dresden chess Olympiad or learning that our Malaysian team had not much success against the better teams at this event.
As I was writing this week’s story, five rounds of the chess Olympiad have passed by. It was almost reaching the halfway stage of the event with only six more rounds to play.
In these five rounds, the Malaysian team – comprising Mas Hafizulhelmi, Lim Yee Weng, Mok Tze Meng, Jimmy Liew and Edward Lee – won three matches and lost two. Some of you may think that, hey, that’s not too bad a result.
Of course, if you look at it this way, we’re still in plus territory: scoring a 3½-½ result against lowly Libya in the first round, a 2½-1½ result against Jersey in the second round and another 2½-1½ result in the fifth round against the Dominican Republic. These teams were seeded below the Malaysians.
However, the crunch matches were Germany One in the third round and Slovakia in the fourth. These were two highly rated teams, especially Germany One (their first team in the event) and I was hoping that we could get reasonable scores.
Unfortunately, our team was over-run. In both matches, our team went down by similar ½-3½ scores. I know that our players tried their hardest against them but their players showed ours the difference between a grandmaster-class player and an international or Fide master.
A world of a difference, in fact. They saw deeper than our players, they played faster, and it didn’t take them long to counter our players’ strategies and tactics.
So it was very frustrating to see our players lose. The only silver lining in these two matches was that Germany One and Slovakia could not take the full points from our side. Thank goodness for Yee Weng’s solid play that earned us the two draws. He had the better game against his German grandmaster opponent and missed an opportunity to gain a big advantage – possibly a win, even – when the game was agreed drawn. Here is the game:
White: Lim Yee Weng
Black: Jan Gustafsson
1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nf6 3. d3 Bc5 4. Nc3 c6 5. Nf3 d6 6. h3 Nbd7 7. O-O Bb6 8. a4 h6 9. d4 O-O 10. Re1 Re8 11. dxe5 dxe5 12. Nh4 Nf8 13. Qf3 Ne6 14. Ne2 Ng5 15. Bxg5 hxg5 16. Red1 Qe7 17. Nf5 Bxf5 18. Qxf5 Rad8 19. Ng3 Rxd1+ 20. Rxd1 Rd8 21. Rd3 Rxd3 22. cxd3 Nd7 23. Qg4 Nf8 24. Nf5 Qf6 25. Qf3 Kh7 26. Qh5+ Kg8 (see diagram) 27. Qf3 Kh7 28. Qh5+ Kg8 (½-½)
Instead of 27. Qf3, White could have played 27. Qxf7+. Black is then forced to exchange queens with 27. … Qxf7 28. Ne7+ Kh7 29. Bxf7 and White will emerge with an extra pawn and command of the white and black squares. Also, Black would be hard-pressed to defend all his pawn weaknesses, especially with White’s immediate threat of 30. Nd6.
It’s to be noted that after 27. Qxf7+, Black cannot play 27. … Kh8 because of 28. Qg8 mate. Neither is 27. … Kh7 an option because of 28. Qh5+ Qh6 (forced) 29. Nxh6 gxh6 30. Qf7+ with checkmate to follow.
I greatly suspect that Gustafsson did see 27. Qxf7+ and the consequences that would follow, and so he offered Yee Weng the draw which was accepted almost immediately to the German’s relief.
Nobody could fault Yee Weng for accepting the draw as he could see around him that Jimmy had already resigned his game and both Mas Hafizul and Mok were losing but with the draw offer already been made, if our player had taken more time to study the position it would be likely that he would have rejected it.
But uppermost on his mind was to grab the draw and prevent the team from being whitewashed by the Germans. I would like to confirm it with him when he gets home. A player’s innermost thoughts can be a very valuable lesson.
Maybe this is just one instance of the gulf that separates a grandmaster from a Fide master. The rating difference between Gustafsson and Yee Weng was almost 240 points. At the end of the game, the grandmaster may have noticed the danger quicker and faster but for most of the game, the grandmaster looked rather ordinary.
According to the official website of the chess Olympiad, all the games in each round can be viewed live at http://schachlive.dresden2008.de/live.team.games.m.eng.html but even on a non-playing day like last Tuesday, the site can be agonisingly slow and you will need a lot of patience.
Alternatively, if you are just interested in the results, http://chess-results.info will be your best bet for the information.