Cerdas Barus wins Telin International

The Telin Chess International Tournament

Text and photos by Anastasiya Karlovich and Kristian Liem

Telin Chess International Tournament 2011 is taking place from April 1st to 7th, 2011, in Jakarta, Indonesia. It is the only international open tournament in Indonesia, but the local Chess Federation plans to continue organising such type of tournaments in the future.

The organisers of the event are the Indonesian Chess Federation and Telin Indonesian Telcom. Telin is a main sponsor of the event and a subsidiary company of PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk., the biggest telecommunication services and networking provider in Indonesia.

110 chess players from seven countries are participating in the nine round Swiss tournament with time controls of 90 minutes for the whole game with a 30 seconds increment for every move starting from the first move. Two special rules from the organisers: a “no-draw offer” rule until 30 moves, and the "zero tolerance" rule which force chess players to be seated at their boards when the games are scheduled to start.

The organisers provided an impressive prize fund: more than 25 thousand dollars in total. The prizes are 1st: US $5,000, 2nd: $3,000, 3rd: $2,000, 4th: $1,500, 5th: $1,250, 6th: $1,000, 7th-2th: $750, 13th-20th: $500. The best female players gets 1st: US $1,500, 2nd: $1,000 and 3rd: $500.

Cerdas Barus was born in Karo, North Sumatra, on January 1st 1961. What makes him unique as a chess player is not only he is a GM but he is deaf. He learnt Karo chess, which has different rules, at the late age of 14, but switched to classical chess when his family moved to Medan in 1978. He was really talented and picked it up quicly. His international career began in 1983 as a team member of Medan City team who participated in Asian Cities Championship in Hong Kong then it was followed by Chess Olympiad in Greece a year later. After this Olympiad 1984 he had been practically involved in the most, if not all, of Indonesian important chess events until 2002. Cerdas might recall 2002 as the golden year. In addition to being National Champion, he was also the winner of Hamzah Haz Open Jakarta and the runner-up of Wismilak International. In November he hit his peak on Chess Olympiad held at Bled, Slovenia. Cerdas won a gold medal for the third board after collecting 8.5 VP out of 10 games. The achievement also gave Cerdas the third (the last) GM norm. [Source: Muhammad Isfendiyar, IndonesiaBase]

Final top standings after nine rounds of play

• Full results are available here

The table shows the results of players who scored 5.5/7 or higher, plus the top result of players with 5.0/7. We included this to inform our readers on progress of WFM Warda Aulia Medina, who featured prominently in our previous report. Unfortunately this very talented 13-year-old lost her last two games, against GM Dibyendu Barua of India and FM Irawan Tjhin of Indonesia (rated 2345). We do not have the games of the final rounds yet, but the tournament bulleting gives us an inkling of what transpired in round eight:

Nicely put, right. Anyway, we are sure to report on this very interesting young lady again soon.

Round one, with Warda Aulia playing black against IM Ronny Gunawan, rated 2420,
who played 1.b4 to confuse the child. Guess who got punished – in 42 moves.

In round five Warda Aulia faced GM Eugenio Torre, who finished the event in 2-5 place

She had good drawing chances at move 17, was essentially lost at move 20 but kept
the experience grandmaster busy for 52 moves, with drawing chances again at move 49.

Another interesting player: Indonesia's top female, WGM Irine Kharisma Sukandar, 19

In round three Irine faced GM Zhang Zhong in a game she lost after 37 moves

Girl power in Indonesia!

Dinner with coconut drinks in typical Indonesian style after the round

Links Official tournament site All availabe games in zipped PGN First ChessBase report on the Telin International Reports in the Jakarta Globe To read, replay and analyse the PGN games we adivse you to download the free PGN reader ChessBase Light. This program also gives you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.

Copyright ChessBase