Of Melaka Chess Festival - The Classical Tale

With the conclusion of the Florencio Campomanes Memorial International Rapid Chess Championship 2012, spectators and enthusiast can now turn to the more serious chess event - The Historical Melaka International Chess Championship 2012 and the Challenger section of the same event. Compared to the Campo event which attracted 69 players, the International event has 36 players with 8 GM, 6 IM, 1 WGM, 2 FM and 1 WFM from 8 different countries including Malaysia. With half of the players on the field are titled players, this would be a good time for Malaysians playing in the event to beef up their rating points and possibly, a shot at getting a norm. The top seed player for the International event is GM Arun Prasad of India followed by GM Alfonso Romero Holmes from Spain, GM Alexander Fominyh from Russia, GM Adam Horvath from Hungary and his compatriot GM Atila Czebe. Malaysian team is lead by IM Mas Hafizulhelmi who is seeded 13th and WFM Alia Anin Azwa Bakri who is seeded 29th.

For the Challenger section, 68 hopefuls from as far as Terengganu and a bus load of students from Pahang took part in the event including Wakoko Enos from Uganda - a student studying in Melaka, and a relatively small but strong Indonesian contingent comprising of 5 players. Top seed for the section is Eddy Fong of Perak followed by Ramli Abd Rahim of Terengganu and Fairul Yusof also of Terengganu, and Mohd Ezmi Mahmood of Kelantan.

With one more game to be completed as of 7:10, our ASIAN Master Ahmad Fadzil Nayan is still slugging it out with GM Alexander Fominyh on table 3 in a tight duel between Fadzil's Rook/Pawn against Alexander Bishop/Knight pawn ending. The first major upset happened at no less than Table 1 when top seed GM Arun Prasad drew with untitled Anasrullah of Indonesia who is rated 2127 against the former at 2517. Another minor upset from Round 1 happened on table 17 when Unrated Hendrik Maha of Indonesia beat WGM Kruttika Nadig of India.


Currently, everyone is rooting behind Fadzil Nayan who is holding against GM Alexander Fominyh to create another upset on the top boards.


For results of the Historical Melaka Classical event, do visit www.chess-results.com for more details