Barbados’s top chess player international master Orlando Husbands represented the Caribbean team in an online match with a Chinese team recently.
Husbands was part of a four-member team which also included grand master Jimenez Luis Lazaro Aguero of Cuba, women’s FIDE master Catherine Kaslan of Suriname and Jessica Callendar of Guyana.
They played against a team of similar sex composition (two males and two females) from China which included Renjie HUANG, Chenxi ZHAO, women international masters Tianqi YAN and Ruotong CHU.
The match would be a Scheveningen, where each player would get to play each player on the opposing team twice with both the black and white colors.
On the men’s side of the equation, the average combined ratings of the two players were similar, however the females of the Chinese team were much higher rated than the Caribbean girls. This clear advantage to the Chinese team would be the deciding factor in the match.
On the first day of the match Husbands faced the two Chinese male players. He was able to score half point from his two games against Chenxi Zhoa, but could not get off the mark against Renjie Huang.
However, on the next day Husbands fortunes turned around as he had to battle the two Chinese female players. Husbands was resounding as he defeated both Tianqi Yan and Ruotong Chu one and a half and minus half points in their 2 game match ups.
Grandmaster Aguero of Cuba was the highest point scorer on the Caribbean team with five and a half points from his eight games. He lost none of his mini matches, drawing against the two male Chinese players and defeating both the females. The Chinese team duly won the match by 23 to nine points winning seven of eight matches and drawing one. International Arbiter from Barbados, Kelvin Daniel, who was the Caribbean representative on the arbiters’ team expressed his satisfaction with the high standard of organization of the event and with the media coverage in China and the governmental support from the Asian powerhouse in organizing the event. Kudos must also go to the Surinam federation who organized the initial event from which the Caribbean team was selected from. This match allowed Caribbean players to be exposed to a high standard of chess as China is a chess superpower. It is hoped that such an event can be repeated and maybe in an over the board format. (PR)
