'Blue Friday' for RI's youth chess stars

Musthofid The Jakarta Post Jakarta

The sixth round of the World Youth Chess Championship in Oropesa del Mar, Spain, saw the Indonesian youth team dealt a cruel blow as all three team members were defeated.

Susanto Megaranto, who held the overall lead only two days ago and was expected to shine in the championship, failed to hold off Hungarian Viktor Erdos' onslaught in their U-14 category match.

Andrean Susilodinata, in the U-12 category, lost to another Hungarian, ninth seeded Krisztian Szabo. Also in the Under 12 group, Boy Reinhard completed the ignominious hat trick by getting dumped by Spaniard Ivan Salgado Lopez.

The defeat knocked Susanto down to seventh place with 4.5 points from six matches. Erdos, meanwhile leads the group with 5.5 points after his win over Susanto, coupled with his fifth round shellacking of second seed Hikaru Nakamura of the United States.

Andrean stayed on 4 points and had to settle for a mediocre 15th while Team Indonesia rookie, Boy, with one win, three draws, and two losses, was languishing well back of the leaders.

Erdos seemed to have equipped himself with a special counter- variation against Susanto's favorite Sicilian Sveshnikov strike. The fierce Hungarian induced Susanto into playing the opening moves so quickly that the Indonesian overlooked his opponent's unorthodox 5th move, which proved to be the turning point.

"Susanto should have allowed himself a break at that stage to evaluate the position and review his strategy. Instead, he carried on with his routine moves, which turned out to impede him from developing an attack," Kristianus Liem, a team official stated.

Erdos was in total control of the game from that point henceforth. The only chance for Susanto to earn a possible draw came in the 36th move, but that opportunity was missed as well.

Erdos needed 48 moves to finally stop Susanto, who has now lost hold of the top spot in a just matter of two days.

Coach GM (Grand Master) Utut Adianto admitted to being caught out flatfooted in the preparation.

"I have to admit we only prepared for a French defense, which is Erdos' favorite repertoire," he said, and added that he was still optimistic that the tournament would be a success for his young charges.