4 way tie for Thomson Cup 2013! Cyrus Low pips masters Urcan, Suelo and Tin to the title! - by Junior Tay

It was chaos at Thomson Open 2013. The favourites for the tournament, FM Jarred Neubronner, CM Tan Weiliang and  FM Tin Jingyao were hit by shock losses in early rounds. Jingyao was downed immediately in Round 1 by Philip Goh. Jarred did not follow up accurately after damaging Olimpiu's Kingside structure and the Romanian-Italian master gave him a lesson on how to use open files...

Another seismic shock occured when Weiliang with a huge advantage against Cyrus in a Bg5 Najdorf, overpressed with 2 bad moves in a row and lost. Olimpiu will feature the critical position on his site in good time.

Talk about tension in the final round. NM Roberto Suelo put himself in pole position for the Thomson Cup title after outplaying NM Olimpiu Urcan in the penultimate round after a torturous opposite coloured Bishop ending. With 5.5/6 and all his main rivals one point back, all he needed was a draw to clinch the title. However, FM Tin Jingyao had other ideas. Even though in their final round game when most of the pieces were hoovered off the board, the Hwa Chong Institution student decided to do a 'Magnus' and squeeze the Pinoy master for as long as possible. His perseverance paid off immensely as you will see in the impressive  finish here.
Will it be Kelvin Wee or Cyrus Low to join Tin in the mix? If Cyrus wins, his better tiebreak will prevail. In a swashbuckling finish, Cyrus Low executes a Rook and Queen sacrifice to mate Kelvin Wee and the schoolboy emerged the Thomson Cup champion.
Suddenly, a four way tie looked possible with Olimpiu Urcan having chances to join the podium positions. Or not...because Olimpiu at this point was in dire straits with material deficit after German Paul Butteumueller had almost neutralised all his threats time and time again. Down to the blitz finish with Paul 1.12 minutes against Olimpiu's 2.20, all of a sudden, Paul unfortunately made an illegal move and pressed his clock and Olimpiu pressed the pause button for the arbiter's decision. The arbiters after discussing, decided to add 2 minutes to Olimpiu's time and Olimpiu's pesky Knight kept dancing around, constantly snapping material as Paul attempted to convert the win. Unfortunately for the German, he ran out of time just when he was about to find a clean way through and Olimpiu joined the crowd at 5.5/7.

 A marvellous performance by Cyrus. I recall an incident last year during the National Age Group Championships. IM Rico Mascarinas had said 'Watch this kid Cyrus. He has strong potential' even though Cyrus was languishing at the event. Now we can see how the boy has realised his potential on the local circuit!

My thanks to Olimpiu for this pic!

Final positions from Chess-results.