Malaysian Armada at The 13th Bangkok Chess Championship

The Malaysian Armada with a total of 19 players (  11-open and 8 - challengers) sail ( read : fly :) to the 13th Bangkok Chess Club Championship / Thailand Open   which started from 14-21 April 2013. 202 players took part  in the Open section. A total of 36 countries are represented including 68 titled players at this annual event held at the  Dusit Thani Resort in Pattaya .

 This 9 round open  tournament is getting stronger and bigger every year. Former World Chess Vice Champion - GM Nigel Short (2697) is the top seed followed by Romanian GM - Leventa Vajda (2632), Germans - Jan Gustafsson (2621) and  former Women World Vice Champion - GM Koneru Humpy (2597) from India.  In term of participants in the open section which is also the main event, the Chinese have the biggest armada ( 23) followed by the host country Thailand   (22), Philippines and India (both 21).



One surprising fact is Asian chess powerhouse - Vietnam didn't send a single player which is quite surprising considering that both country have a diplomatic relation and  it only take   about 2 hours flight from Thailand to Vietnam.

Our top Malaysian players in the Open  tournament is IM Mas Hafizul followed by our young hot shot- Yeoh Li Tian , Asian Amateur Champion - Ahmad Fadzil Nayan, Wong Jianwen,  ex-World Police Chess Champion - Ismail Ahmad , Muhd Syazwan, sibling Fong Yit San and Fong Yit Ho, Tan Jun Ying, Ryan Chan Yi Meng and Sri Siva Kumar.

IM Mas beat IM Manuel Bijaoui (left) in round 7.

Up to round 7, Mas is our top performer with 5 points.  His best result  is from round 7 when he beat France IM - Manuel Bijaoui (2416).  Yeoh Li Tian is our next top performer with 4.5 points. Li Tian  had a notble performance in round two when he ground down Hungarian  veteran  but experience GM - Jozsef Horvath (2534). He has shown that he is capable of beating the GMs. As we all know, he beat Vietnamense no. 2 - GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son in HD Bank Cup Open last month. A victory over two GM in a back to back  tournaments surely will add more confident to this 14 years old boy.  Hopefully he will continue playing in strong tournaments and  beat the GMs and IMs  regularly.

The organizer  is doing a great job by sending and updating news, results and photos to reporters/ bloggers all around the world. They also have a live broadcast of the top 10 game for every round. However i think there is one think that they can improved which is to provide the pgn for every games .

Special thanks to Jeffry Wong who sending all the photos and news about the Malaysian players.

For further details click here and for the Live game click here