The Chess Connections: Of GACC Chess Championship

It was a late call for me from Gregory to become the Arbiter for the 16th GACC Chess Event organized by the UM 2nd College Boys but, I took the offer gladly because it is one of the better events in the chess calendar that I would like to be a part of. For one thing, the 2nd College boys (and girls) are rather efficient and effective at organizing the event. This is the 3rd year that I have been with them and they never cease to amaze me with their almost clock work precision in getting the events organized. The camaraderie and teamwork is astonishing hence, running the event with only a single arbiter is a breeze! The only setback with this years event was the lack of participants with only 68 players in total - 19 girls and 49 boys. And most of the participants are local university players with noticeable absences from Russia, Iran and to a certain extent, China and Philippines.

Although the usual suspects from Singapore (Nanyang and National University) are here, and a couple of players from Sri Lanka, the international flavors continue to fill the GACC event with individual foreign students studying at the universities that are taking part coming from India, China and Indonesia.

GACC runs a very unique event where players take part in individual event but the scores that they have accumulated will contribute towards the University's final team tally to win the Team category. For this year's event, due to the low number of participants, both the men and women will play in a single event and this adds a bit of twist as the ladies need to compete with the guys to earn points. In the 16th edition, 11 university teams have registered with University Petronas, University Sains, host University Malaya and Nanyang Technological University of Singapore sending a team each and Islamic University, IUM Foundation, University Putra and National University of Singapore with 2 teams each. A combined team made up of the two Sri Lanka players, local UPSI and UM players set up the 11th team for the event.

The event has completed its 3rd round earlier today with 7 players leading the pack with a perfect 3 points each. Currently at the top of the leader board is Kelvin Wee of Nanyang Technological University followed by Wang Guanyu from National University of Singapore and Isuru Alahakoon of E-Soft Conmputer College Sri Lanka rounding up the top 3 spots. Muhd Syazwan Zulkifli of University Malaya is in 4th place followed by Looi Xin Hao of University Sains Malaysia, Lawrence Teoh of Nanyang and Zhuo Ruofan of National University of Singapore.

Top seed Ahmad Fadzil Nayan of Islamic International University suffered a slight setback after drawing his game with Ruby Kwan from Universiti Perguruan Sultan Idris and both are trailing half point from the leading pack with 2.5 points each.

For the team standing, Combined University Students are leading the event with 9.5 points followed by Nanyang Technological University with 9 points and sharing the 3rd place with 8 points each are National University of Singapore and host University Malaya.

Team Standing after Round 3

Ruby Kwan created a stir when she drew with top seed Fadzil Nayan. Post game analysis showed that she could have won her game if she had pressed further