DESPITE wins from Sheriffa Ali and Anthony Drayton, Suriname ended as winners of the chess segment of the Inter-Guiana Games at the Ocean View International Hotel yesterday when the Guyana team came up against Suriname. Ali moved to victory against Reyna Frijde for Guyana’s first win as the competition started off with the 3-hour matches. However, the St Joseph High student had less luck when things came to the blitz round where the players where challenged to overcome their opponents in one five-minute match and four 3-minute matches.
A pressured Ali, who admitted that fast chess is not her strong point, lost all three of her successive matches.
For Guyana Technical Institute (GTI) student Drayton, things were more favourable on the board both in his opening and the blitz matches. Playing against Rosangela dos Ramos, Drayton won his opening match and went on to win his first three blitz matches against the Surinamese.
However, Drayton went under in his final blitz match when he played Kromosoeto Benja.
The four-man team which also comprised Sue Hai Feng and Jessica Clementson, lost the other two opening matches but recorded more wins in the blitz round where Feng won all four of his matches against Manish Ramjiawan.  
Clementson lost her opening match against Benja and proceeded to lose all four of the blitz matches as well. In her opening match, notwithstanding a pretty good start, things turned for Clementson coming down to the end of the match.
In the end game after the players exchanged queens and rook and Clementson took a pawn which opened the way for Benja to fight and win two of her pawns, before pushing his pawn straight down to Clementon’s end to get a queen, after which no possibility remained for Clementson to salvage the game.
The chess matches were a part of the IGG tournament which also saw Guyanese and Surinamese students play against each other at cycling, football and table tennis yesterday. The event ended with a closing ceremony last evening.