Road to be the Best Chess Player in the World!-Chapter 396: Easy Pairings Two Rounds in a Row!
"Let’s cheer for our success in the first round of the tournament!"
"Cheers!"
Right now, all the Indonesian players except for Duta were gathering in Bagas’s room, having a takeout dinner together. They were too tired to go out to find some food, so they decided to order two boxes of pizza from the local chain restaurant, coupled with some cold colas to refresh their brain in this hot environment.
"Where is Duta, anyway?" Sheva couldn’t help but ask.
For that, Bagas and Sarah had the corners of their lips twitching in amusement. "Well, his mother ’politely’ asks for his leave in this celebration, as she wants to have a quality time with her son here."
Yeah, unlike the others, this was Duta’s first time coming to Dubai, so his mother was also here to accompany him. She still didn’t trust the others enough, and it was understandable, since they were basically strangers before the trip to Dubai was announced. However, it was quite funny to see a young boy getting dragged by his mother for a lot of selfies, shopping, and other activities that most boys would never enjoy, even in their wildest dreams.
"Tch! What a mama boy!" Claudia sneered in disdain.
"Ia! Don’t be so rude like that!" Anna frowned, scolding her sister without mercy. "If you said that one more time, I would tell Mom and Dad about that, and they would never leave your side for the rest of the tournament. Do you want that?" Threaten the big sister.
Claudia’s face turned pale instantly as the girl shook her head strongly. "No, no, no! I am sorry, Big Sis, but please, don’t tell Dad about that!" She pleaded.
Just like Duta, the Marisa Siblings also had their parents on this trip. However, unlike Duta’s mother, who followed her son like a hawk, Anna and Claudia’s parents were here for a short vacation, and they were determined to do that, leaving their daughters alone as they were travelling all across Dubai. Based on the photos that they posted on their Instagram, it seemed that the patriarch and matriarch of the Marisa Family were having the vacation of their life, which somehow made some of them envious.
"Anyway, so, Duta is not here, huh?" Sheva shook his head, turning back the conversation to the original topic. "It is a pity... After all, he is the biggest protagonist today..." He sighed.
It was not far-fetched to think that Duta was the main protagonist of the day. After all, even though the others won their game cleanly, their opponent wasn’t that hard, so the result was something that they had predicted since the beginning. As for Duta, even though he only got a draw result, his opponent was a veteran IM, and it was not easy to force this result in his first-ever game in a strange place like this.
So, yeah, even though he was the only one who didn’t win his game, the boy deserved to be the main protagonist tonight.
"Oh, forget it! His mother will never let him mingle with us for so long!" Bagas sighed helplessly, having already seen that woman’s ferociousness when it came to her son. "Don’t worry, you will meet him again later!"
Well, Sheva himself wasn’t that worried. He was just intrigued with Duta, as anyone who got promoted from Irfan’s chess club shouldn’t be an ordinary player. However, he wouldn’t lose his sleep for not being able to talk to the boy, so Sheva just shrugged it off quickly.
This tournament seemed to be quite friendly for all the Indonesian players here. For the second time in a row, they got a pretty easy pairing.
For the second round, Sheva would play against an Indian player whose rating was slightly higher than that of his first opponent, 2158. However, this was still under his control, so the boy didn’t think that anything problematic would come. True enough, once he unleashed his full power, the Indian boy didn’t have any answer except to resign, giving Sheva his second point of the tournament.
Medina, Anna, and Laysa were also the same. Their opponents were still the lower-rated ones who couldn’t even bear the pressure they put on them. Those ladies managed to sweep all of their opponents cleanly, making four Indonesian players hang around the top 35 of the standings still with perfect records.
As for Claudia... Well, it was unfortunate that she was paired against a strong IM, Oliver Dimakling from the Philippines. The man had an ELO rating of 2436 and no extraordinary feature, the standard IM in the chess world. However, it was still quite difficult for Claudia to deal with him, especially since she herself didn’t have any data about the man.
Honestly, Claudia also did quite well in this game. She didn’t just stay passive and go for a positional warfare that she liked the most, and instead, the girl took the initiative, trying to get into her opponent’s neck first. Hell, at some point, Claudia even had a strong advantage, with the computer engine giving -3.3 for her good position. Unfortunately, in a time scramble, the girl crumbled, blundering all of her positional advantages before finally accepting the draw offer from that IM.
This was still a good result, but for Claudia, who was so close to winning, this result hurt more than ever.
Meanwhile, the last and newest addition to the team, Duta, also didn’t have a good day. The boy got paired with Muradli Muhammad, the Azerbaijan GM, who Sheva still remembered clearly finished in first place above him in the Biel International Open a few weeks ago. This time, Duta was outmatched from the beginning, with no chance to pull a miracle.
They themselves wanted to offer their support to the boy. Unfortunately, once again, the mother blocked them, only promising that she would deliver the message to the boy. Honestly, this was the first time Sheva saw a mama bear who didn’t let anyone get closer to her son like this, and he was quite speechless about this.
However, he didn’t have any time to dwell on it. Hell, the others were also on the same boat, as everyone knew that the real tournament began in the third round. The difficult opponent had already been waiting for them for tomorrow, especially for Sheva, as he could feel the other’s speechlessness when they saw his pairing for the third round.
Adrian Sheva (2477) – (2695) Alexandr Predke
