Rose Hall town’s Kriskal Persaud, a former national junior and senior chess champion, looks tentatively at the chess board in his first game of the Umada Cup. Persaud is standing aloof from the board as his Surinamese opponent, Malgie Avikaar, uses his allotted time lavishly, thinking and thinking. The move is different from the one which Persaud anticipated. There must be an opening here, he told me after the game. In haste, Persaud makes his way back to the playing table, consciously searching for the flaw which he felt existed, following his opponent’s previous move. He found it, and in glee, began an eloquent combination which aimed at bringing down his competitor. He was successful. In game two, Kriskal took down local Candidate Master Anthony Drayton. Before the beginning of his game with Drayton, I advised Persaud to be careful, as Drayton had played in Norway at the celebrated Olympiad. Persaud’s response was direct and stinging: “Me na care whey he play. He gat to play now.”
Earlier, just before the start of the Drayton game, Persaud told me that he questioned the erroneous newspaper report which stated that Drayton had lost his first game. He informed Drayton about this error, which got Drayton visibly upset and he subsequently went on to lose his game against him. In game three, Persaud outplayed the Trinidadian Candidate Master Esan Wiltshire, the subsequent winner of the Challenger’s section of the Umada Cup.
Keith Simpson is wearing a fashionable pair of white reading glasses as he is drawn to oppose Aditi Soondarsingh of Trinidad and Tobago. It is early in the opening phases of the game when Simpson’s cell phone rings. A collective gasp emanates from the
