Jakarta flops in Asian Cities team chess tour

Jakarta flops in Asian Cities team chess tour

JAKARTA (JP): Without grandmasters Utut Adianto and Edhi
Handoko, Jakarta could not defend its title at the 10th Asian
Cities Team Chess Championship in Dubai, the United Arab
Emirates, which ended on Saturday.

Jakarta, which won the biannual tournament in 1992 and 1994
finished fifth with 21.5 points. Tashkent and Samarkand of
Uzbekistan came first and second respectively after both scored
25.5 with a solkov difference of 10. Solkov refers to the scores
collected by one's opponents.

Ashkabad of Turkmenistan and Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam
finished third and fourth. The two cities also ended up with
22.5. A solkov difference of 8.5 put Ashkabad ahead of Ho Chi
Minh City. As winners, Tashkent, Samarkand and Ashkabad were
awarded US$6,000, $4,000 and $3,000 respectively in prize money.

Jakarta lost Utut, currently the country's number one
grandmaster, and senior grandmaster Edhi, to Bandung. The capital
of West Java has the right to include Utut and Edhi in its team
because both Utut and Edhi live in Tangerang, one of Jakarta's
suburbs in West Java.

As a result, Jakarta's team was weakened, Jakarta's team
captain Danny Yuswanto told The Jakarta Post from Dubai
yesterday. Even though Jakarta's third and fourth players
remained as strong as they were in 1992 and in 1994, without Utut
and Edhi, they could not achieve much.

Bandung could not make it either. Its new acquisitions, Utut
and Edhi, are fine as its first and second players. But its third
and fourth players could not fully support them, Danny said.

Until the sixth round, Jakarta was running fifth with 17
points, half a point ahead of Bandung, Danny said. But in the
seventh round, Jakarta was beaten by Tashkent with 3.5-0.5 and
Bandung only managed to draw with Singapore for a 2-2 result.
"This meant that in order to win the tournament, we had to beat
the other former republics of the Soviet Union 4-0, which was
quite impossible," Danny said.

Jakarta fielded a full team in the last two rounds, the eight
and the ninth round. But Bandung, realizing it stood a very
remote chance of winning, fielded only reserve players and
finished eight with 20.5 points.

The only consolation for the Indonesians, however, was in the
rapid chess tournament held alongside the championship. In the
rapid chess tournament, Bandung won first place with 27 points,
followed by Samarkand with 24 points. The Kazakhstani city of Pav
Lodar, Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta finished third, fourth and
fifth respectively.

The Indonesian squads are expected to arrive home tomorrow.
(arf)