Guyana’s male and female chess teams’ participation at the biennial FIDE Chess Olympiad in Chennai, India, last month, has resulted in improved international rankings for the teams and some individual players.
According to a press release from the Guyana Chess Federation (GCF), the women’s team improved its FIDE ranking by a whopping 16 spots moving from 136 to 120 while the male team jumped four spots from 152 to 148.
The women’s team defeated Laos, Central African Republic, Timor-Leste and Libya and drew with Oman while the men’s team also scored four team wins against Seychelles, Gabon, Brunei Darussalam and Burundi.
Another positive development is the fact that there are two new conditional Women Candidate Masters (WCM) in Sasha Shariff and Jessica Callender.
Both players earned their conditional WCM Candidate Master titles which will appear behind their names once they attain ratings of 1800 or above.
Candidate Master Taffin Khan’s ranking is now 2005, the highest in the country.
Khan played on Board One for Guyana’s National Open team.
In his fourth consecutive Olympiad, he ended on 4.5 points having played all 11 rounds. FIDE Master Anthony Drayton, in his fourth Olympiad,
gained 33 rating points. His ranking is 1961 and he is now the third highest rated active player in the country. Loris Nathoo moved up to 1702, while Roberto Neto is at 1651.
Ethan Lee is the highest rated junior player with 1523 points.
This was his first Olympiad.
On the women’s’ side, 12-year-old Anaya Lall, who was previously unrated, gained a rating of 1166 after defeating highly rated players in Chennai.
She is now ranked sixth among rated players.
Jessica Callender gained 22 rating points and is now rated 1319 while Sasha Shariff gained 57 points and is ranked 1240.
For active players listed for Guyana on the FIDE website, the top five rated females are all from the recent team that competed in the Olympiad. From first to fifth place is Callender, Shariff, Lall, Lam and Nellisha Johnson.
