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Indonesia Open round 1 report |
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Thursday, 11 October 2012 22:36 |
The Indonesia Chess open 2012 is already underway with some of the world’s finest players competing at this years event. There were no big surprises in the first round of play of IOCC 2012, but certainly more than one or two small scares, the most significant being when the defending champion Li Chao of China came close to being upset by local heroine and Asian Continental Champion, WGM Irine Sukandar.
She pressed the second seeded Chinese national player throughout most off the game, but in the end the he was able to once again draw upon all his well known tactical resourcefulness to covert a near loss into a draw.
Live games / Results and standings
Led by top seeded Ivan Sokolov representing the Netherlands, the majority of the other favorites had less problems but a number of young players were able join Irine on the scoreboard by holding their more fancied opponents to draws, including locals FM Pitra Andika against fifth seeded GM Sergey Fedorchuk from the Ukraine, IM Farid Firman Shah against eight seeded GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son from Vietnam, and FM Kaiser Jenius Hakiki against seventeen seeded GM Stephen Gordon from England.
A few young foreign players also scored a few notable half points and most prominent amongst them were China’s Bai Jinshi who held GM John Paul Gomez while Filipino Paulo Bersamina drew Hungary’s Hoang Thanh Trang.
The result of the day was probably that of National U-16 Champion Azarya Jodi Setyaki who continued a run of good results in recent tournaments with a big upset over veteran IM Dede Lioe to confirm that the former child prodigy is now very much back on track to fulfill his early promise.
 Irine Kharisma Sukandar vs Li Chao
Round 2 tomorrow
While there are probably no easy games in such an evenly matched field, many of the favorites will be having relatively easy match ups and should be confident of maintaining their perfect start to the tournament.
There are a number of intriguing encounters including the all Filipino encounter between GM Oliver Barbosa and GM Richard Bitoon, their countryman GM Mark Paragua taking on Indian WGM/IM Tania Sachdev, a good test for local hope GM Susanto Megaranto against Chinese WGM Guo Qi and young Azarya Jodi Setyaki looking to upset Vietnamese GM Candidate and IM Nguyen Van Huy.
Irine Kharisma Sukandar will have another big challenge in playing eighth seeded GM Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son while both Bai Jinshi and Pitra Andika will be having their early moments of truth respectively against GM Ghaem Maghami Ehsan and GM Stephen Gordon.
 Bai Jinshi  Pitra Andika
 Azarya Jodi Setyaki |
