Carl Ja­cobs

The per­for­mance of Trinidad and To­ba­go at the re­cent 39th Chess Olympiad in Rus­sia speaks for it­self. The coun­try's five-man team placed 115th among the 149 par­tic­i­pat­ing na­tions in the 11-round con­test, pro­duc­ing re­sults which, while cer­tain­ly not dis­as­trous, can hard­ly be de­scribed as laud­able. How­ev­er, as Dou­ble Rooks had pre­dict­ed, T&T's women team fared much worse than their male coun­ter­parts, fin­ish­ing deep in the cel­lar, third to last among the 115 com­pet­ing na­tions. If the chess world's supreme in­ter­na­tion­al con­test re­mains the ul­ti­mate yard­stick by which to mea­sure the skill lev­el our play­ers have at­tained, then we should be some­what chas­tened and chal­lenged by the re­sults our com­peti­tors achieved at Khan­ty Man­siysk over the last three weeks. One ob­vi­ous need in this re­spect must be the ex­pos­ing of our play­ers not on­ly to pro­fes­sion­al coach­ing but al­so to more first-class com­pe­ti­tion which now of­fers more hope in the fact that T&T has be­come the venue for two ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al tour­na­ments every year, the Caribbean Chess Car­ni­val and now the Uma­da Cup.

Our men's team, of course, could have done bet­ter, but an analy­sis of their per­for­mance makes it dif­fi­cult to be too crit­i­cal. T&T, in fact, had the same score as Ja­maica, each win­ning four and draw­ing one of their 11 match­es. The tie-break sys­tem, how­ev­er, placed Ja­maica 105th, nine places above T&T. Bar­ba­dos fared slight­ly bet­ter, gain­ing the 95th spot by win­ning four match­es and se­cur­ing two draws. In this healthy in­ter-Caribbean ri­val­ry, T&T's men will be pleased with their thrilling 2.5 - 1.5 vic­to­ry over the Ja­maicans in the tenth round. This win over­turned a de­feat T&T suf­fered at the Olympiad 30 years ago. FM Keron Cabralis, 14-year-old St Mary's Col­lege stu­dent, sent T&T ahead by out­play­ing Du­ane Rowe. FM Ryan Harp­er kept the lead by hold­ing FM War­ren El­liot to a draw. Ja­maica drew lev­el when IM Jo­mo Pit­tersen de­feat­ed Mar­cus Joseph. It was then left to Rav­ishen Singh to strike the de­ci­sive blow by beat­ing Shane Matthews, sev­en time Ja­maica cham­pi­on.

Apart from their vic­to­ry over Ja­maica, T&T in­flict­ed a 4 - 0 drub­bing on Ghana, de­feat­ed Kenya 2.5 - 1.5 and Papua New Guinea 3.5 - .5 and drew 2 - 2 with Bar­ba­dos. On the oth­er hand, T&T were white­washed by Bosnia Herze­gov­ina, Tajik­istan and Libya, los­ing al­so to An­dor­ra 3.4 - .5; South Africa 3.4 - .5 and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic 3 - 1. In­di­vid­u­al­ly, FM Harp­er, play­ing on first board, was T&T's most suc­cess­ful per­former, scor­ing five wins from his ten games. The for­mer na­tion­al cham­pi­on's Olympiad ex­pe­ri­ence may well have count­ed in his favour. FM Cabralis, mak­ing his de­but in this tour­na­ment, fin­ished with a cred­itable score of 4.5. Singh col­lect­ed three points from 7 games, FM Frank Yee 2.5 from 9 and Na­tion­al Cham­pi­on Joseph, an­oth­er first timer, 1.5 from 8. Now what more could Dou­ble Rooks say about the par­tic­i­pa­tion of T&T's women play­ers in this pre­mier tour­na­ment? If, as the rul­ing goes, the coun­try is ob­lig­at­ed to field a team of women at the Chess Olympiad just to sat­is­fy the re­quire­ments of the Brighton De­c­la­ra­tion, then we will con­tin­ue to suf­fer the em­bar­rass­ment of poor re­sults. It is clear­ly ab­surd, in DD's view, to send fe­male chess play­ers to this supreme in­ter­na­tion­al con­test when they are yet un­able to achieve any no­table suc­cess in open tour­na­ments at home or in the re­gion.

As in the men's case, Olympiad se­lec­tion should be based on the cri­te­ria of sol­id and con­sis­tent achieve­ment in open com­pe­ti­tions. But if this is the re­al­i­ty, then we must make the best of it. T&T women man­aged to win one match, that against lit­tle-fan­cied Sey­chelles, and to draw against Ja­maica, Libya and Kenya. They were hum­bled 4 - 0 by Kaza­khstan, Paraguay and South �frica, and went un­der to Nether­lands An­tilles 3 - 1; Ko­rea 3 - 1 and Japan 3.5 - .5. WCM Ja­van­na Smith reg­is­tered the high­est score among T&T s five fe­males, 4.5 from nine games. Na­tion­al cham­pi­on Adi­ti Soon­dars­ingh fin­ished with 3 from 9, Gabriel­la John­son 2 from 6, while Joanne Rat­tan Chung and Melis­sa Pereira scored 1.5 from 8 games. Still, DD feels some sym­pa­thy for our fe­male team who were vir­tu­al­ly thrown in­to this tough and daunt­ing are­na with­out any se­ri­ous prepa­ra­tion. As far as is known, no coach­ing pro­gramme was ever or­gan­ised for them. In this re­spect, it is in­ter­est­ing to learn that Mr Bhisham Soon­dars­ingh, a mem­ber of the T&TCA ex­ec­u­tive, ac­com­pa­nied the con­tin­gent as cap­tain of the women's team. Clear­ly this gen­tle­man was the ob­vi­ous choice, re­plac­ing the ex­pe­ri­enced John Raphael, and must have been a great in­spi­ra­tion to his charges. As a re­sult, DD can on­ly hope that he and his wife had an en­joy­able trip to Khan­ty Man­siysk.