India Reds Get Silver In Men, Women
By Arvind Aaron

Chinese Men and Women teams remained undefeated to win the Asian Team Chess Championship at Visakhapatnam on January 9, 2007. They qualify for the World Team Championships.

In the final round, China scored a huge 3.5-0.5 margin win over Sri Lanka to assure themselves of the gold medal in men. Indians managed to defeat Iran 2.5-1.5 thanks to good performances from Krishnan Sasikiran and G.N.Gopal with white pieces on the first and third boards. Ganguly drew with black while Abhijeet Gupta was defeated.

China and India scored identical five wins and two draws to reach 12 match points. In the tie-break, China had scored 21.5 to India's 19.5. The third place went to Vietnam who also scored five wins but suffered one defeat to India Reds. They scored eleven match points. Thus, India Reds paid the price for making an opening draw with India Blues!

Chinese were much stronger favourites in women. With Humpy, Vijayalakshmi in the Indian team, India could have offered better resistance to the Chinese. Humpy is playing at Wijk aan Zee from January 10 and Vijayalakshmi has not played since her father passed away in August last year.

China won all its seven matches including a big win against India to win the title with 14 points. India beat the rest and scored twelve points. India beat Vietnam 2.5-0.5 in the final round with Tania making the draw on the last board after wins came from Harika and Nisha. China had beaten India Greens 2.5-0.5. Vietnam tied for the third place with 7 points and had the better tie-break score than Iran and India Blues.

China pays attention to team chess and though they made their Olympiad debut at Buenos Aires in 1978 they have moved to clear strong position in Asian chess. Though India made its debut in the Moscow Olympiad of 1956, we are behind them in team chess. We will need our best side to win the Asian Team Championship if the Chinese are playing. India had won in Tehran last time when the Chinese did not participate.

The week long event was excellently organised by the East Coast Chess Academy on behalf of the Andhra Pradesh Chess Association and the AICF.


15th Asian Team Chess Championship 2007 - Final Rankings

Rank Team Gam. + = - MP Pts.
1 China 7 5 2 0 12 21½
2 India Reds 7 5 2 0 12 19½
3 Vietnam 7 5 1 1 11 19
4 Uzbekistan 7 4 0 3 8 16½
5 Iran 7 3 0 4 6 14½
6 India Blues 7 2 1 4 5 12
7 Afghanistan 7 1 0 6 2 6
8 Sri Lanka 7 0 0 7 0 3

5th Asian Women Team Chess Championship 2007 - Final Rankings

Rank Team Gam. + = - MP Pts.
1 China 7 7 0 0 14 19
2 India Reds 7 6 0 1 12 16½
3 Vietnam 7 2 3 2 7 11½
4 Iran 7 2 3 2 7 11
5 India Blues 7 2 3 2 7 10
6 Uzbekistan 7 1 3 3 5 8½
7 India Greens 7 2 0 5 4 7½
8 Sri Lanka 7 0 0 7 0 0

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