After the dubious results of the past two rounds, the team had to show that they're not in Turkey for a holiday. And show they did with an impressive 3.5-0.5 pounding of Panama.
CM Patrick Aizpurua, spotting Daniel F 250+ ELO points, played for a draw from the White side of a French (by transposition) and succeeded despite Daniel's attempts to press for a miniscule edge. Not the most ideal state of affairs but this galvanised the other team members to go for the jugular.
IM Goh Wei Ming, determined to make amends for his insipid Rd 3 play, roared back to life with the 'Dragoon'!
Next, a ruthless asphyxiation job by Zhang Zhong.
IM Ravindran's opponent who after neutralising Ravindran's Big Clamp Closed Sicilian, miscalculated a pawn advance thinking it could not be captured. Ravindran pocketed it after a long think. Initially, I thought the Panamanian gave up the exchange for scant compensation but a certain National Master friend showed me that things are not that simple and had Valdez made the 30...Qd4! sally, Ravindran would have had his hands full fighting off the Black initiative. However, after 30...h5??, Ravindran consolidated and gladly put him out of his misery to ensure a 3.5-0.5 victory.
Round 5 sees us paired against the Faroe Islands.
This time round, the Malaysians got clobbered by Finland 3.5-0.5 but they still had reason to cheer as IM Mok Tze Meng stayed on trek for the GM norm with a classy draw against the ELO 2638 rated GM Tommy Nyback. Tommy was about to demonstrate how to play with the two Bishops when Mok found the arcane plan of exchanging his remaining Bishop for Black's knight. With deft handling of the Knights, he blotted out all the Kingside pawns to reach the desired draw.
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