Meanwhile, on the other side of the venue, the other Indonesian players also had a tough battle to face. On board 11, Medina was frowning deeply, staring at the board intently as she tried her best to get a breakthrough against her opponent right now.
She really underestimated her opponent here. At first, the woman thought that Alexander Motylev, already 45 years old, would play conservatively, waiting for her to strike first before taking immediate action. However, Medina forgot one thing here, and that was the rating difference between the two.
Yeah, even though Alexander Motylev was old, he still had his own pride here, especially against a lower-rated opponent like her. There was no way he would wait on the back against an opponent he deemed weaker. Hell, if anything, this was the perfect match for him to go aggressive, an opportunity to reminisce about his handsome past while also not worrying too much about getting defeated in the game.
Playing with the Najdorf Sicilian, the man managed to force Medina's kingside to get extended far out of the reach, disabling the protection on the black king while also getting an opposite-side castle. This meant that the game was about to enter a racing time, where both players would try to get into each other's king first with their pawn.
Unfortunately, Medina's pawn structure on that side had already gone too far, so it was pretty easy for the Russian veteran to put pressure and break that structure. True enough, just with another pawn advancement, Alexander Motylev managed to get Medina's H pawn, and right after that, his pair of bishops, his queen, and his rook were ready to strike in that direction.
*Author note: If you want to visualize the position better, check the comment below.
Even though the computer showed that the game was equal, no one believed that for even a second. Hell, if Medina knew the evaluation bar, she would've laughed already, thinking that the machine was trying to mock her right now. After all, except for a computer or a super grandmaster that could make every move precisely, no one would be able to treat this game as an equal. No, it was white who had the advantage, and black had to defend the king in a passive game if she wanted to survive.
Meanwhile, on board 15, Anna also had a big frown on her face. However, unlike Medina, the frown came from the irritation that the girl felt as she felt like her opponent, Raja Panjwani, seemed to underestimate her right here.
Yeah, instead of going for any other normal opening, the man chose to go for the Alekhine Defense, an archaic opening that had been left by any other elite players in the world. This wasn't like Sheva's attempt to catch his opponent off guard, as Anna knew that her friend would always come up with a devious plan in all of his surprise openings. No, it was pure arrogance coming from her opponent, as the opening itself was so bad that the computer gave Anna a +0.8 evaluation just in the second move of the game.
To get everyone the idea of how bad this opening was, in the first four moves, Raja Panjwani, her opponent, had only moved two of his pieces, and one of them was the meaningless one-square advancement from his D pawn. As for the other, it was the knight that was jumping around all over the place, trying to escape from the chase that Anna set for it.
Honestly, the girl was in for an easy win. Hell, if anything, she was happy about it, since her opponent's rating was 2450, 100 points above hers. However, the way the man played here felt like an insult toward her, and Anna was not enjoying this moment at all.
'So, you are looking down on me that much, huh?' The girl gritted her teeth viciously. 'Oh, fine! Just don't cry once I beat you later!'
Overall, though, all three Indonesian players were doing well in this round. Oh, yeah, Sheva and Medina were still currently in a tough match, but their expressions told everyone that they could hold on for a long time. As for Anna's match… Well, it might be a little rude, but besides the fact that it looked like the girl was about to get an easy win, this game itself didn't have that much appeal compared to the other two. Hell, some people even thought that Bagas only showed her game out of courtesy, so that nobody felt left out here.
Still, Bagas felt ecstatic when he saw the statistic that he saw today. In total, currently, the live streaming has 3500 viewers, and that could still increase depending on the situation on the board. Hell, he even predicted that once the game entered the endgame phase, where the winner or loser would be determined, the number of viewers would get another jump, and crossing 5000 would not be an impossible dream here.
It was definitely the statistic that only those big viewers got in their live streaming. No one thought that a chess tournament would attract this much attention. However, this was the power of the people from Asian countries. As long as they saw their comrades going into an international tournament to represent their country, it didn't matter whether people knew about the competition they played in or not, but they would just go and show their support first to make everyone know their presence.
This was also the same case as what all three Indonesian players in Biel experienced right now. Even though they themselves didn't really know about this—they were too afraid to open their social media after the troll attack a few days ago—Bagas, who observed the internet all the time, could see how many new fans they got in the last couple of days. Even for Bagas, it was quite overwhelming, honestly, so the boy couldn't imagine how Sheva and the two ladies would react when they saw this by themselves.
'Well, let's just show them about it later.' He muttered to himself. 'For now, let's just let them concentrate on the last two rounds of this tournament. If they could maintain this level of performance until the end, the support they receive in the Olympiad later would only be bigger than this... Man, I cannot wait to see that with my own eyes!'
If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.