It is said that a bad beginning leads to a good ending. That saying proved true for new national junior Chess champion Anthony Drayton when the Guyana Chess Federation (GCF) staged it closed national chess championships over the weekend at the Ocean Spray Hotel and Kei Shar’s Sports Club.
Drayton had lost his second game of the competition to the defending champion Haifeng Su who led for most of the tournament.
But Su found out that defending a championships was not altogether that easy and lost momentum and eventually the title.
It all started in the fourth round on Wednesday at Olympic House, Kingston when Feng found his lead cut to half a point over Drayton after he was held to a draw by Saeed Ali. Matters got worse for the defending champion when he surprisingly lost to Davion Mars in the penultimate round on Sunday at the Kei Shar’s Sports Club on Hadfield Street and despite his final round win over Bennett; Su knew that he had not done enough to defend his title.
Drayton on the other hand grew from strength to strength and following his second round defeat to Su, he reeled off consecutive wins against Davion Drickpaul in the third round, former champion Ron Motilall in the fourth, Ali in the fifth Carlos Pettersen in the sixth and Davion Mars in the final round. He had defeated Trenton Bennett in the first round.
Asked about the tournament yesterday, Drayton told Stabroek Sport:”It was okay, you know, a few rough challenges….Feng in the second round.”
The new champ said he blundered away a pawn in the Modern Opening which is an opening that his opponent usually plays and was unable to recover.
“I thought he would have won the tournament,” he said after losing to Feng.
Drayton was full of praise for Feng’s play admitting that the defending champ was his toughest opponent because his play was ”very tactical.”
He also said that most of the players were very strong.
Drayton, who participated in the third annual Umada Cup tournament in Suriname prior to the nationals, said that tournament served as the perfect warm up for him.
“It was the perfect warm up. It was one of the reasons why I went there. It was first international tournament and I went for the experience.
At the Umada Cup Drayton, who was unrated was declared the best Under-1700 rated player.
At the moment Drayton says he has a partial rating of 1729 which could either go up or down when he does play depending on the result.
Drayton ended the round robin tournament with six points ahead of Su on five and a half, Mars five, Motilall four, Ali three and a half, Petterson two, Bennett and Drickpaul one point each.
The presentation of prizes to the junior participants would be made after the conclusion of the 2012 Senior Championship which is scheduled to begin in November.
