The Chess Connections: Of Another Successful Selangor Open

The 40th Selangor Open offers one of the more intense and nail biting finish in the event history - at least as far back as I can remember which was since the turn of the century. The usual scenario is that by the 7th or 8th round, the winner of the championship is almost a sealed deal but for this year's edition, it goes right down to the wire, almost a photo finish!

When leader Wong Jianwen lost to Nelson Villanueva in the 8th round, the word around the floor was that GM Alexander Forminyh would definitely over take Jianwen to regain the top spot going into the last round but.... that was not to be. The party came crashing on Grandmaster Alexander Forminyh as Fong Yit San played well to hold the more experience Forminyh to a drawn game. And with that, 3 players - Jianwen, Nelson and Alexander, had 6.5 points going into the last round with Nelson going head on against Alexander on Table 1 and Jianwen having to face Sumant Subramaniam on Table 2. With Personal Encounter being the first level tie break, different results in each of the game will yield different winners for the event. For Jianwen, a win against Sumant will favor him as he had beaten Forminyh in the earlier rounds and the safe bet would be that the GM should triumph over Nelson but of course, Sumant is no easy meat for Jianwen.

When Jianwen and Sumant agreed to a draw, all eyes are now focused on Table 1. The only thing that Nelson had to do was to hold the GM to a draw and with that, he would have become the 40th Selangor Open Champion repeating the feat for a Philippines player as IM Rolando Nolte did it last year - with a perfect score but, it was not to be. Alexander played really well to secure his advantage and with that, squeezing the win out of Nelson to earn the title of the 40th Selangor Open Champion 2013.

The most surprising performance from the event came from Bausch Koh who came out of nowhere to finish in the top 8 bracket - earning 6.5 points out of 9 rounds. Seeded 42 for the event, Bausch performed well in the very last day to secure a draw with Mark Siew in the 8th round and to everyone's surprise, beat 7th seeded Zaidan Zulkipli in the last round to catapult him into the top 7 finishers, sharing the 3rd spot with the likes of Sumant, Fadzil Nayan, Nelson Villanueve and Mark Siew.

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Prize giving and closing ceremony was officiated by CAS President, Ahmad Shafruddin and the prizes for the winners were given away by Daniel Yong Chen-I, Yeoh Chin Seng and Ahmad Shafruddin.