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May 29, 2006
Turin 06 r8 Games & Notes
I put a handful of key games up for replay and PGN download. Link here. The official daily Olympiad bulletin "Turin Moves" is available from the FIDE website. (More current than the official site, which is still on issue #5.) All the results plus photos, interviews and more with good production value. Impressive stuff. They've also started adding the news items from that to the official English site at last. List of news links here.
From these we glean that there are three women playing for their national teams in the open section of the Olympiad this year, two of them on top board. (The comments point out Zhu Chen for Qatar, whom I had forgotten -- married to Qatar first board Al-Modiahki -- and Knarik Mouradian of Lebanon, also a national champion.) Hong Kong's national champion is the 15-year-old Anya Corke. The item credits her for being the second-youngest national champion in history since she won it at 14, saying the youngest ever was Capablanca. Sigh. They probably got that from the Wikipedia entry on Corke. Capa's 1901 match against Cuban champion Corzo was not for the national championship, although he could be called, and called himself, the moral champion. He finished 4th in the 1902 championship and never actually held the title.
I suppose we could count months to see if Corke was younger than Fischer when he won the US championship at 14. I believe Paul Truong says he was champion of Vietnam at the age of eight. As with Corke in Hong Kong, I doubt we're talking master opposition. But a record is record. Corke was born in California and recently played in the Susan Polgar girls tournament, where she tied for first.
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The 'official' bulletin has ignored other women, e.g. WIM Mouradian Knarik for Lebanon.
The title (and photo on Bigbase) are indisputably female. But her name is given as Mouradian Knarik Jacob, which is interesting.
Posted by: gg at May 29, 2006 19:28Lebanon's Knarik Mouradian Makes Chess History
--Becomes 'Mens' Champion
LEBANON--Lebanese Armenian Knarik Mouradian clenched her spot in chess history as she won the championship title in the national men's chess tournament in Lebanon on July 26, 2005--a feat completed by a marginal number of female chess players. Mouradian, a HMEM member from Antelias, defeated her male opponent during the last round, while her main competitor Ahmed Najjar was defeated. Not a newcomer to championship titles, Mouradian won the women's title at the Arab Chess Championships in August 2004. She told reporters then: "I like these trophies. They look so nice and attractive and I am getting used to collecting them."
http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Knarik_Mouradian
Posted by: gg at May 29, 2006 19:31They also missed GM Zhu Chen, who plays for Qatar.
Posted by: KB at May 29, 2006 19:32
GM Niaz Morshed of Bangladesh (First ever GM of indian subcontinent ..ahead of Ananad and all) won the national chamapionship at the age of 13 (he was joint champion previous year at 12 but came 3rd on tiebreak) He went on to win the next four national championships (in 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niaz_Morshed
Posted by: Kamrul. Hasan at May 29, 2006 23:47I combined all the round 8 games here at my blog:-
http://chess.maribelajar.com/?p=478
ha ha... shameless plug for my blog..
Posted by: GilaChess at May 30, 2006 05:28What a coincidence you mentioned Anya Corke as I am the webmaster for the Anya Corke Fan Club website :)
http://anyacorke.gilachess.com
Posted by: GilaChess at May 30, 2006 05:31Anya Cooke started off the Olympiad in fine style, by drawing GM Vladimir Georgiev of (The Former Yugoslav Republic of) Macedonia. Does anybody know if Hong Kong's two Reserve players, Marco Yu and Melvin Yu, are related?
Posted by: DOug at May 30, 2006 05:53Marco and Melvin are brothers. I did not have time to update Anya's games. But will do so soon.
Posted by: GilaChess at May 30, 2006 06:24The exhaustively inaccurate official report also failed to mention Jeslin Tay, on Singapore 'men's' team.
Anya Corke was HK champion at the time of Calvia Olympiad, from an event that finished in June 2004. Therefore, she was HK champion at 13 years 9 months, not at 14 years.
Posted by: gg at May 30, 2006 09:13
