The Sasha Cells is under way

The Sasha Cells eight-round swiss tournament began last Sunday at the Kei-Shar’s Sports Club, and four rounds have been completed so far. The tournament features a time arrangement of two-and-a-half hours per game which qualifies it as an ideal preparatory tournament for the national championships.

Wendell Muesa, a Guyanese who lived in Barbados for a little over a decade, and who has now taken up residence at home, took an early lead with three impressive wins against Learie Webster, David Khan and Brian Thompson. Khan had a Bishop, Knight and Rook against Meusa’s two Rooks and equal pawns, but could not convert his material advantage to a win or even a draw. Muesa was Barbados’s national junior champion for some years.

His fourth-round clash with Shiv Nandalall was entirely another matter. Nandalall is a dangerous player, so when Muesa erred, Nandalall immediately began the process of closing all exit routes open to his opponent’s King. He eventually scored the full point and now leads the tournament with 3½ points from four games. Muesa and Taffin Khan tied for second place with three from four with four to go. The clash between these two promises to be an interesting match, as both players have been junior champions for Guyana and Barbados respectively.

This increased time span of over two hours for each game gives the tournament a higher quality, and makes it a more internationally flavoured competition. The machinery of thought from mind to chessboard is more comprehensive, and offers sufficient time for an exhaustive examination of a number of moves before deciding upon the most accurate one.

The purpose of competitive chess is to out-think, out-wit and out-play your opponent in every phase of the game – from the maze-like complications of modern opening theory, to struggling through the enormous tension of the middle game, and finally coping with the experimental precision of the ending, where as one grandmaster styled it, “the loneliness of logic prevails.”

Chess is such an intricate and intense game, much like any modern theatre of sporting conflict, that it involves the kind of pressure which only the toughest can survive. A serious championship contender can no more turn up unprepared for a match than a boxer, a basketball player, a footballer or a cricketer can.  Each game in the current Sasha Cells will feature two uninterrupted hours of pure brain boiling. As we search the board for the best moves, we determine what is true and what is false.

Chess thinking is very important to the outcome of a game. Few players – and by few I mean you can count them on the fingers of a mutilated right hand – have the ability to merely glance at a position, and grasp its nuances and difficulties. The experts have said that Cuba’s José Raúl Capablanca and America’s Paul Morphy had perhaps the fastest total sights of the chessboard in the history of the game. Capablanca is revered for his thorough understanding of a position, and the appearance of an almost effortless style. He said he never agonized over chess. It was as natural to him as breathing.

But Fischer pointed out that every move Capablanca made,  he had to think about it harder than his opponent in order to be supersharp, and remain on top of the position. In a sense this may well be “agonizing over the game.”

The final three rounds of the tournament will be played tomorrow, and whoever wins, will be considered a strong contender for winning the national championship title of Guyana later in the year.