Meusa still holds lead in National Chess Championship

The National Chess Championship concludes this evening at the Ocean SprayHotel with Wendell Meusa still maintaining the lead after four rounds, although he was defeated by Anthony Drayton on Wednesday night. Meusa has already played the two highest ranked players of the competition, Drayton and Taffin Khan, and therefore it seems unlikely that he would draw or drop another game to tarnish his anticipated result.

Meusa’s game against Drayton, who is FIDE ranked some 100 points below him, was tantamount to a ‘fool’s mate,’ a comedy of errors that is hilarious to a chess player. At the level of the national championship we cannot continue to facilitate such errors. For example, Drayton lost a vital game to Glenford Corlette because he did not realize he was in check when he inadvertently picked up his queen to make his next move. So, as the laws of chess stipulate, Drayton had to block the check with his queen, thereby making his queen en prise. Oh boy! He lost the game. Maybe Meusa is rusty following his lengthy hiatus from the game, but simultaneously, I concede, that Drayton displays fighting spirit, takes chances and forces moves. In both of their encounters recently, in the qualifiers and now in the national, Drayton emerged victorious. In both games, Meusa’s play was blemished by tardiness, and possibly, a lack of will. In his game with Taffin, however, Meusa played boldly, confident that he was in control. His king bishop made the excruciating difference in the game.

The enormity of Magnus Carlsen’s achievement in lifting chess’s holy grail from the former incumbent Viswanathan Anand at age 23, without losing a single game in his match, is astonishing. The victory represents a milestone for the manner in which the computer has affected our lives. Carlsen was weaned on the computer, and he made this circumstance tell in his favour. In his final game, when a draw was all that he required to take the title, he went for an outright victory, but Anand eventually salvaged a draw. Kasparov noted: “ He’s a maximalist like Fischer, and he expects a fight to the death.’’ Carlsen’s motto was, if you want to attack hard, you have to prepare hard. And so, in reference to his magnificent win, and to use a quote with biblical and Shakespearian connotations from the New Yorker, I say, “Thus passeth the crown.”

Drayton has just returned to Guyana from Suriname where he participated in the annual November 25 chess tournament which was sponsored by the Surinamese Central Bank. He and Davion Mars represented Guyana, with Drayton placing 8th in the Open category of the tournament. In the beginner’s section, I was informed that there were a little over 200 participants, both boys and girls. There were also a Masters and an Open.

Meanwhile, Guyana was forced to cancel its proposed Caricom international chess tournament, owing to a lack of local sponsorship. The tournament was envisaged to mark 40 years of Caricom relations, and was proposed by the Guyana Chess Federation.

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