Pages

Saturday, April 9, 2011

GM Cerdas Barus wins TELIN International Chess Tournament in Indonesia

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011

Hi everybody,

GM Cerdas Barus has won the TELIN International Chess Tournament that was held in the beautiful city of Jakarta, Indonesia, from April 1-7.

GM Cerdas Barus - learned chess late.
News reports say a total of 110 players from seven countries took part in the nine-round event. There were nine grandmasters and two women grandmasters vying for the top prize. All top Indonesian players attended the tournament including Grandmasters Herman Suradiradja and H Ardiansyah - leaving behind retirement!


After nine rounds of play, GM Cerdas Barus took a clear first place with 7.5 points, to the delight of the local chess fans. Crucial was his last day victory with black pieces against IM Sadikin Irwanto. GM Eugenio Torre and GM Dao Thien Hai split the point on the first table.


GM Barus started off with five straight wins, then lost to his colleague GM Eugenio Torre, but fought back to finish as sole winner.
Cerdas Barus was born in Karo, North Sumatra, on January 1st 1961. What makes him unique as a chess player is not only he is a GM but he is deaf. He learnt Karo chess, which has different rules, at the late age of 14, but switched to classical chess when his family moved to Medan in 1978. He was really talented and picked it up quicly. His international career began in 1983 as a team member of Medan City team who participated in Asian Cities Championship in Hong Kong then it was followed by Chess Olympiad in Greece a year later. After this Olympiad 1984 he had been practically involved in the most, if not all, of Indonesian important chess events until 2002. Cerdas might recall 2002 as the golden year. In addition to being National Champion, he was also the winner of Hamzah Haz Open Jakarta and the runner-up of Wismilak International. In November he hit his peak on Chess Olympiad held at Bled, Slovenia. Cerdas won a gold medal for the third board after collecting 8.5 VP out of 10 games. The achievement also gave Cerdas the third (the last) GM norm.

Final standings:
1. GM Cerdas Barus INA 2443 - 7.5
2-5. GM Merab Gagunashvili GEO 2599, GM Dao Thien Hai VIE 2507, GM Eugenio Torre PHI 2495 and IM Dede Liu INA 2418 - 7.0
6-10. GM Zhang Zhong SIN 2592, IM Sadikin Irwanto 2417, FM Awam Wahono INA 2372, IM Taufik Halay INA 2346 and GM Susanto Megaranto INA 2533 - 6.5 etc

You can access the official website here.


From Alexandra Kosteniuk's
www.chessblog.com
Also see her personal blog at
www.chessqueen.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.