Iran down UAE in Nations Cup

abu dhabi — Iran shot into the lead with a comfortable 3.5-0.5 win over the UAE in round two in the men’s championship of the Asian Nations Cup Chess Team Championship at the Novotel Abu Dhabi Al Bustan hotel on Tuesday night.

In the Swiss System, the stronger teams do not face each other in the early rounds. Iran’s GM Darini Pouria, Parham Maghsoodlo and IM Masoud Mosadeghpour beat IM Noaman Omar, FM Ishaq Saeed and FM Ahmed Abbas Khouri, respectively.

Asian champion GM Salem A.R. Saleh of the UAE held GM Ehsan Ghaem Maghami to a draw to prevent a shutout. Iran have 7.5 game points from two team wins.

In other men’s matches, India drew with Mongolia 2-2, Uzbekistan drew with Kazakhstan 2-2, Jordan beat Kuwait 3.5-0.5, UAE2 edged Oman 2.5-1.5, Sri Lanka beat Nepal 3.5-0.5, Afghanistan beat UAE-3 by 3:1 and Palestine edged Tajikistan 2.5-1.5.

In the women’s tournament, Vietnam and Uzbekistan shared the lead as India held defending champions China 2-2.

India’s Harika Dronavalli and Tania Sachdev of India held China’s Ju Wenjun and Zhao Xue respectively. Tan Zhongyi scored for China against Padmini Rout but Soumya Swaminathan evened the score by beating WGM Lei Tingjie.

Strong Uzbekistan scraped past Iran 2.5-1.5 while Vietnam blanked UAE-2 4-0 to lead the 10-team women’s round robin.

In other matches Mongolia blanked UAE-2 4-0 and Kazakhstan outplayed Sri Lanka 4-0. Sharing the early lead with similar match points are Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan and top seed China.

Vietnam dominated Iraq 3.50.5 while Kyrgyzstan made a similar score against Lebanon to follow with 7 game points each.

China remained in the lead pack but could only score 3-1 against Bangladesh to tally 6.5 game points and trail in the tie break. China are the defending champion in men’s and women’s.