![]() ![]() She also has quite the poker face at the board, quietly working things out. ![]() Khushi was the revelation of the tournament: keen to learn, she readily took ideas and new opening lines into a sponge-like brain. Games against Malta and Iceland in particular showed great grit, while India 2 and Ethiopia were a delight to witness first hand. With more experience in handling positions with small advantages, she could easily have doubled her points total. Thanks to a late squad rotation, she had to play with more blacks than anyone. Every game was an interesting fight, which much appealed to my own style of chess. Hiya showed great promise, especially against stronger players. She can take a lot of pride from this tournament. She also improved her time management massively as the tournament went on. Kim had a few personal worries off the board and a difficult start, but pulled herself together admirably and took her chances when they came. Hopefully next tournament she will get more of a chance to test herself against the stronger players, because she can clearly dispatch those beneath her with relative ease. She was also happy to help preparing the others for their games. Even when she dropped points (two draws, two losses), she was frequently either ahead or no worse for vast majority of the game. Olivia Smith on one was a rock, offering great opening preparation and determination. More importantly, I think all the players gained experience in one way or another. Thanks to a strong finish, despite most of us losing a fair chunk of elo, 50% was achieved. Even in lost matches there were no real blowouts – India 2 in round one was indicative of the lack of luck from the first half of the tournament. The only real disaster was Tunisia, when a possible 4-0 collapsed to 1-3 otherwise results went much as expected. A target of 50% seemed reasonable given our seeding, but once it dawned that many teams were either ungraded or vastly undergraded, with FIDE-supplied GM coaches and pre-tournament training camps, as well as several teams very possibly doing strange things with their board orders, this presented more of a challenge. Wales sent a last-minute fairly youthful and inexperienced team to Chennai. ![]()
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