Mashafizul Flying Start at SIO 2008!!!

IM Mas hafizul has start the Sydney International Open 2008 with an excellent result. So far he has scored 4 points from 5 round with a win in the 4^th round against the famous All Black (New Zealand No. 1) - GM Murray_Chandler (2540) photo left and a draw with Australian no. 3 GM Darryl Johansen (2475) photo right in the 5^th round.

In the 6^th round he will face Aussie no. 2 – the new hot shot and GM to be IM Zhao_Zong-Yuan(2487) . Zhao photo left achieved all three of the required grandmaster (GM) norms over two months in December 2007 and January 2008. Zhao scored 7/9 earning his first GM norm in the First Saturday chess tournament (1-10 December 2007) in Budapest, Hungary. Zhao earned his second GM norm by convincingly winning with 6.5 points the VII Festival Internacional de Ajedrez GEMA tournament (10th category round robin) which was held from 26 December 2007 until 5 January 2008 in Mondariz Balneario (Pontevedra), Spain. In his third attempt, which was unsuccessful, Zhao played in the 33rd Seville Open/XXXIII Abierto Internacional "Ciudad de Sevilla" (5-12 January 2008) Sevilla, Spain finishing with 6.5/9 points (=10th place). In 22-31 January 2008 he managed to achieve his final GM norm at the 2008 Gibtelecom Chess Festival in Gibraltar.