For crying out loud, a brownout?

By Jun Lomibao
Editor

DOHA—The best and the brightest chess minds in Asia gathered for the first three rounds of the rapid competitions Saturday, but before they could strut their brilliancy they had to wait several minutes because—for crying out loud—a brownout struck the playing venue.
           
“This is surprising, nag-bro-brownout din pala dito,” Fide honorary president Florencio Campomanes, who is here to oversee the competitions, told Tagaytay City Mayor Bambol Tolentino, secretary-general of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP).
           
An oil- and natural gas-rich country, Qatar is not supposed to experience power outages. But it did for some 15 minutes at the Al-Dana Indoor Hall of the Khalifa International Tennis and Squash Complex.
           
As a result of the brownout, everyone was asked to leave the playing hall—for security reasons, the organizers said.
           
It was the second time a brownout occurred in this city. The first happened November 28 and just like Saturday’s outage, overloading was blamed.
           
Nevertheless, action in chess got going, but the three-member RP team could only watch the leaders from behind, with grandmaster candidate Darwin Laylo tying for eighth to 19th places with 2.0 points and his best friend, International Master Ronald Dableo languishing in 20th to 25th with 1.5 points.
           
Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan towed six others in the men’s contest with 2.5 points out of a possible 3.0. The 42-man field plays nine rounds with the fourth to sixth rounds scheduled Sunday and the last three rounds set for Monday.
           
Only 14 and untitled, Jedara Docena could only earn 1.0 points to be out of the running in the field of 22 players. Woman GMs Humpy Koneru of India and Atousa Pourkashiyan of Iran showed the way with perfect 3.0 points.
           
Laylo, 26, of Lipa City, who topped the Asiad qualifyings earlier in the year, opened with a 41-move victory over Macau’s Mak Tong Kuan, and followed this up with a draw with Qatari GM Mohammed al-Medaikhi, a more illustrious foe who was the focus of the Qatari media throughout the contest.
           
Medaikhi’s wife, former world Chinese champion Chen Zhu who now plays for her husband’s country, got the same media treatment but could only collect 2.0 points after three rounds of play.
           
Laylo again halved the point with Iranian GM Ehsan Maghami Ghaem in the third round to stay in the hunt for a podium finish in chess, which offers only three gold medals—in individual, rapid play and team classical.