Salalah retain online national chess title
Salalah club retained the title of the online National Chess Championship on Wednesday after tough competition with Mirbat and Al Bashayer. With this accomplishment, Salalah clinched its third title in history respectively. The champion ended all the matches from nine rounds on a winning note except one match against the neighbours Mirbat in which they were positioned in third place.
Al Bashayer impressed during the top domestic event as they claimed podium through positioning in second place. Al Dhakhiliyah team managed to register eight victories and suffered one loss against the champion. Al Bashayer team comprised from the talented junior team’s Anas al Darwashi (who recently impressed all at ISF World Schools Championship Online Chess 2020 as he qualified to the final round and ranked 22nd), Mohammed al Saeedi, Hamood al Busaidy, Abdulrahman al Zadjali d Wafia al Ghafri. Salalah, the top domestic chess team in the Sultanate, featured from the best ranking players including Salim Shemas, Manaa al Kathiri, Ahmed Fadhil, Rawan al Balushi and Anaa al Essai. Many of the team players are representing the national chess team. Dhofar representative team focused on chess as one of the top sport in the team. The team in coordination with Oman Chess Committee (OCC) had a dedicated chess training centre which provides an excellent environment to learn chess and graduate potential players with high skills. Defending champions Salalah had commenced their campaign at the event strongly as all the teams (A, B and C) secured a spot in the finals. The qualification phase registered advancing Salalah A and Al Suwaiq from group A while Salalah B and Saham booked direct tickets to the next round from group B.
The tournament which was based on “Zoom” platform is conducted on Lichess system and it is the same format which is followed by the FIDE. The tournament was monitored by the head coach of the national chess team, Basheer al Qudaimi. The Yemeni coach had attended the tournament and observed the performance of each player to select the top players for the forthcoming events. OCC is keen to organise different chess events and encourage the domestic teams to take part to provide a better technical platform for competitions.