The Andrew Arts memorial tournament had an exciting start at the weekend, showing great potential from the participating players. Fifteen participants are battling in the FIDE-rated Swiss tournament, hoping to gain rating points, unseat opponents and cause upsets within the local chess community.
Round one’s highlights included wins for the titled players Candidate Master (CM) Anthony Drayton, CM Taffin Khan and WCM Maria Varona-Thomas. Haifeng Su returned to the competitive ring in style, defeating veteran Errol Tiwari after a well-calculated end-game and exploitation of Tiwari’s blunder.
Round two was a crowd shocker, with Joshua Pedro outplaying WCM Varona-Thomas. CM Drayton and Roberto Neto played a thrilling game, however Neto struggled against time and Drayton’s superior tactics. Both Haifeng and CM Khan also scored their second wins. Frankie Farley and Saeed Ali gained their first wins in the second round.
Following the trend of upsets, Board One proved true to excitement with Haifeng cunningly crushing CM Drayton in round three. CM Khan went on to score his third win against Joshua Pedro. Tiwari also boasted a win against Neto.
The ranking after three rounds shows both Haifeng and CM Khan in the lead with three points each, followed closely by CM Drayton, Pedro, Rashad Hussain, Ali, Farley and Tiwari with two points each. The players who scored one point each include WCM Varona-Thomas, Neto, Ryan Singh, Jason Willis, Sheriffa Ali and Ryan Goliah, while Jessica Callender is yet to score.
The final four rounds will be played this weekend with action starting at 09:30h on both days at the National Resource Centre, Woolford Avenue.
