Penang Heritage Open

Yesterday (just two hours passed by he he he) was the start day of the Penang Heritage City International Chess Open. Two rounds out of the total nine had completed. The chess tournament was held at Dewan Seri Pinang situated in the famous Penang island. There are two categories - the Open and the Challenger. 71 players are in the former category while 109 participants are in the latter.

In the Open category, IM Mas Hafizul who is seeded third leads the Malaysian chess players. Yeoh Li Tian who helped the Malaysian contingent become the champion of the recent 2010 APSSO is the 21st seed. Yeap Eng Chiam, B15 MSSM individual champ, is one rank higher. Can they with other Malaysian chess players provide the challenge to the Pinoy players that include Malaysian-based Ian Udani?

In the first round, all the above three Malaysians won their respective games. IM Mas beat an Indonesian player while both Eng Chiam and Li Tian won over Malaysian opponents. Tan Jun Feng had a good start when he drew with the top seed, IM Oliver Barbosa.

In the second round, Eng Chiam could not manage to upset the 2nd seed, GM Niaz Murshed of Bangladesh. IM Mas continues his winning streak against a countryman player while Li Tian managed to draw with the 5th seed Pinoy. Wong Jian Wen, a MSSKL chess player, had a great victory against higher-seeded Fide Master (FM). Such kind of result that we want our junior chess players to achieve.

In the Challenger section, a chess blogger named Yat Guo Jie is the top seed. Most participants are Malaysians and juniors as GiLoCatur observes based on the players list in chess-results.com. Of the top 10 boards, both the first and the third had draw results. In the second round, based on the results in chess-results.com, the second seed was defeated by lower seed opponent.

Today, two more rounds will be played. How's the results would be? Let's wait and see!

(GiLoCatur : The correctness of the info or results of the matches is based on chess-results.com)