But anyway...
On B1, Mas' opponent played without a concrete plan; Rather aimless, and based on cheap tricks(9.Ng5, 11.Qb3...), I must say. Mas won this one quite simply.
B2 saw Mok playing some unusual chess, castling kingside earlier than necessary, followed by a h4-h5-h6 advance against an uncastled king. His opponent did not know how to react, and after some tactics(16.b4!,17.Nxb5) white set up a position to drum up an attack against the uncastled black king, eventually being a rook up in the final position. Very nice middlegame play by Mok, although I can't say the same about his opening plan. 0-0 was unnecessarily early, and the h-pawn advance is questionable.
B3 highlighted the main weakness of Malaysian players: the ability to play openings well with a concrete middlegame plan. Khai Boon, with little experience against players from outside Malaysia entered the Sicilian Dragon with a rather dubious move order (4...Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 gives white the option of 6.Nxc6 which is known to be bad for black) and picked a strange plan against the Classical setup:
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.Be2 0-0 8.Nb3 d6 9.0-0 a6 10.a4 Na5?
This move does not go well with a6, because the pawn on a6 is pretty much useless here. Actually, it's probably better placed on a7 since it needs to cover the b6-square in case of Bb6 ideas. In fact, this tactical and positional possibility is one of the reasons why the Na5 variation of the Rossolimo is not good.
11.e5
What did I say? If 11...dxe5 then 12.Qxd8 Rxd8 13.Bb6 [Sorry. I mean 13.Nxa5]
11...Ne8 12.Nxa5 Qxa5 13.Nd5
In layman's terms (and mine), black is in deep shit.
13...Qd8 14.Bb6 Qd7 15.Be3 Qd8 16.Bb6 Qd7 17.Ba5 Rb8 18.Bb6 e6 19.Ba7 exd5 ½-½?
Incredible. Well, black isn't immediately lost but I think that after 20.Bxb8 dxe5 21.c4 d4 (opening files isn't a good idea when you opponent has more rooks than you) 22.Bf3 eying the d5 square, and a potential target on e5 as well as a queenside majority, white has a great position. Maybe white got cold feet here. It's hard to tell if he's a strong player since the only good move he made was 11.e5, which is somewhat obvious. Perhaps to him, squeezing a win out of this position is very difficult, and hence not worth it since they were the last game to finish, if I'm not mistaken. Who knows, maybe some people in the Hong Kong chess community is grilling him for his dubious call now. Eh, that sounds familiar...
On B4, Peter Long played the same setup as Mas, but with the white pieces. With a strong grip on the d5 square, he opened the position and had a strong pawn on d5, hampering the scope of black's light squared bishop and reducing black's mobility. White proceeded to infiltrate black's position, and emerged a pawn ahead with a continued attack against the black position on move 28. Black sportingly resigned in the final position. I liked this game; white played very simply but took apart his opponent nicely, though his opponent's poor defence contributed to this.
The team played genuinely well this round, but I can't say the same for Khai Boon; he played the opening badly and had no chance to demonstrate his strength in the middlegame. Well, there's still 9 rounds to go.
