A player to watch

Wendell Meusa, a 21-year-old Guyanese who has been living in Barbados for ten years, and who recently returned to Guyana, gave an impressive display of chess talent during last Sunday’s one day rapid tournament that was held

World chess champion Vishy Anand is surrounded by five enthusiastic female chess players/fans during his eight-game, rapid match encounter with Peter Leko earlier in the month. Anand emerged the victor 5-3 following a tense battle with his opponent.

at the YMCA.

Meusa lost one game in the nine that he contested. The tournament was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and Jumbo Jet Auto Sales.

Of course, the rapid tournament is not the type to make a solid judgement about a player, since each player has only fifteen minutes on his clock to complete the game. But Meusa won the recent DDL Independence tournament which carried a longer time span and featured the majority of our strongest players. He was Barbados’s national junior chess champion and played around the Caribbean. He is a chess player to watch.

Beginning shortly is a nine-round 90 minute per player per game chess tournament that is being sponsored by Sasha Cells.
This tournament should attract the cream of competitive players around the country, and should produce some solid games crammed with the latest theory. It will be interesting to see how Meusa will fare against our Junior and Senior champions, Taffin Khan and Kriskal Persaud. Neither played in Sunday’s tournament, since they both prefer the longer time spans.  World champion Vishy Anand and Hungary’s top grandmaster Peter Leko faced each other June 2-7 in a duel of eight rapid games in Miskolic. The games were played at a rate of 25 minutes for all moves, with a bonus of an additional ten seconds per move. In the event of a 4-4 draw, blitz games would decide the winner. The battle was a hard-fought one, but Anand won the encounter 5-3. Here is the fifth game.
 
Leko, Peter (2751) – Anand, Viswanathan (2783)  Miskolic Rapid (5), 6.6.2009

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5. 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Qb3 dxc4 6.Qxc4 0-0 7.e4 a6 8.Be2 b5 9.Qb3 c5 10.dxc5 Bb7 11.0-0 Nxe4. The main line of the “Hungarian variarion”. 12.Nxe4 Bxe4 13.Bf4 Bd5 14.Qe3 Bxb2 15.Rad1 e6 16.Ne5 Nd7 17.Nd3 Bg7 18.Nb4 Nf6 19.Bf3N.  Rc8  20.c6 Qa5! 21.Qc5?  Bxf3 22.gxf3 Rfe8 23.Bd6 Bf8 24.Bxf8 Rxf8 25.Rd6 Qa3! . 26.Rd3 Qb2! 27.Rb3 Qe2 28.Nxa6! Qxa2 29.Ra3 Qb2 30.Qc3! Qxc3 31.Rxc3 Nd5 32.Rc5 Ra8 33.c7 Rfc8 34.Rc6 Ra7 35.Rd6 Kg7 36.Rc1 b4 37.Rd8 Raa8 38.Rxc8 Rxc8 39.Rb1 Kf6 40.Rb3?? Ke7 41.Nxb4 Nxc7? 42.Rc3 Kd6 

43.Rd3+?? Nd5 44.Kg2 Rc4 45.Nxd5 exd5  46.Ra3 d4 47.Ra8 Rc7 48.Kf1 Ke5 49.Rd8 f5 50.h4 Rc1+ 51.Kg2 Rc6 52.Re8+ Re6 53.Rd8 Rd6 54.f4+ Kd5 55.Re8 Re6 56.Ra8 d3 57.Kf3 Kc4 58.Rc8+ Kb3 White Resigns!!  0-1