TEAM Guyana won their first team match of the 43rd World Chess Olympiad being held in Batumi, Georgia.

Guyana, heading into round 6 and in need of a match win, dominated their games against their African opponents from Rwanda.

Game of the round would go to Glenford Corlette, who from early in the opening stage due to a closed centre, launched an attack against his opponent’s castled king position.

Two pawns (h+g) with the Queen, Rook and a Knight were enough to worry the opponent which resulted in some inaccuracies from A Niyibizi who is higher rated.

To finish things off, Corlette sac his Queen, promoted 2 pawns to two new Queens and threaten mate in one which forced his opponent to topple his king.

Another good game was CM Taffin Khan who played with the black pieces against CM M. Murara.

With intent to play the London System with the white pieces, CM Murara made some inaccuracies with his move order which Taffin was quick to counter.

However, this game saw classical Taffin sacrificing one of his Bishop to create a storming three (3) passed pawns on the Queen side.

Taffin’s last tactical move pawn to c2 forked Rd1 and Kb1 was enough to pull off a brilliant win.

Rising talent CM Anthony Drayton made it his second win in a row when he tactically outplayed his African opponent, F. Mutabazi with the Guicco Piano.

It was sacrifices, forks, pins, double attacks all throughout this sharp game. However, CM Drayton proved his tactical arsenal was better when he sac to stop from castling, then finished it off with a brilliant king side attack.

Loris Nathoo will gain some confidence from this game after he managed to obtain a draw by threefold repetition against the slightly higher rated Urwin Murara.

Meanwhile, in the women’s section, veterans–national female champion WFM Maria Varona Thomas and WCM Sheriffa Ali –secured convincing wins for Guyana.

First WFM Thomas Sicilian proved to be too much for Asha Kondo who is unrated and threw her pieces away. WFM Thomas accepted these gifts then ruined the castled king side to checkmate her opponent.

WCM Sheriffa Ali checkmated her opponent after a 59-move long e4 game. On the other hand, young lasses Nellisha Johnson and Sasha Shariff, on their first outing to an Olympiad, lost both of their games to Z. Ebrahim and C. Alapati respectively.

The men team currently stands at 142 from 24 games with 6 points while the women team stands at 130 with 6 points from 24 games as well. With 5 more rounds to go, the Guyanese contingents will be looking to finish strongly and accumulate as much wins as possible.