Myanmar chess – all the gambit for a gold

NAY PYI TAW – If former chess great Garry Kasparov or new world champion Magnus Carlsen were to play in some of the 18 chess events of the Southeast Asian Games, they could lose miserably at the hands of an unknown Thai, Vietnamese or Myanmar chess player.

The events are not chess at all, they are corrupted or popular versions of the standard international game and it’s driving world-class Filipino chess players crazy.

“We really don’t  know how these games are played, but when we were told we could participate in these events, we practiced for two weeks before we came here,” said team coach Jayson Gonzales.

The Filipino chess players thought the games were easy enough until they found themselves near the cellar in their games against Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.

The Myanmar organizers, hoping to win more medals here, introduced such “un-chessy” events as ASEAN chess (individual rapid, blitz and standard and team rapid), traditional or Myanmar chess (team and individual rapid and blitz) international chess (rapid and blitz), Chess 960 (the local name of the Robert Fisher-invented Random Chess) and transfer chess.

The Burmese themselves realized they were introducing games they could not win.

The six-man team of chess grandmaster Eugene Torre, Joey Antonio, Oliver Barbosa, John Paul Gomez, Mark Paragua and Darwin Laylo and woman international masters Catherine Perena, Janelle Frayna and Jan Jodilyn Fronda were able to perform well in the international rapid and blitz, the five-minute version of the standard 40-minute-per-player time control in standard chess.

Gomez won the bronze in the international rapid behind long-time rivals Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son (gold) and Nguyen Duc Hoa (silver), while Antonio took the other bronze in the blitz also behind the two Vietnamese.

Six events were lined up in the international category with Indonesia winning two (Irine Kharisma Sukaran in women’s rapid and blitz) and Thailand winning the men’s team blitz and rapid. Barbosa finished sixth in international men’s rapid, Perena and Frayna eighth and 10th, respectively, in women’s rapid, Paragua sixth in men’s blitz and Frayna and Perena fifth and sixth in women’s blitz.

Gomez earned the country’s highest chess medal, the silver in random or 960 chess, where major pieces are arranged at random on the first rank. Torre placed sixth in the game which he and Fischer popularized in the 70s after the latter retired for good from standard chess.

Asean chess applies different rules in the movement of the bishop and queen. The bishop, which has the shape of an elephant, can move only one step forward, two steps backward but one step either side. The rook and knight have the same movement. The major pieces occupy the same standard position at the first rank but the second rank is left vacant and the third rank occupied by the pawns.

Asean chess is a hybrid of Myannar and  Thai chess where the player can place his pieces according to his preference, giving his opponent an element of surprise.

Thailand made a 1-2 finish in Asean rapid, where Laylo and Torre finished sixth and eighth and in blitz where Antonio and Paragua placed fifth and sixth.

The men’s and women’s team event were ongoing.

Myanmar chess has four pawns on the third rank and four pawns fourth ranks. The major pieces may be arranged according to one’s preference but the major pieces have different shapes and the queen, a major piece, is a useless piece it can move only on any of the four diagonal directions, but one step at a time.