Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 17,508 islands. It encompasses 34 provinces with over 238 million people, making it the world’s fourth most populous country. The most famous island is most likely Bali which is heaven for tourist. Years ago I was lucky to play some tournaments over there and yes the island is worth visiting. Indonesia has everything to discover, nature and culture. You can still find people living in the forest still keeping the ancient way of living and you may find the high end technology used by modern city. Nature lovers have good news, most likely the Jakarta Open is moved to Bali next year.
Jakarta hosted the big chess open third time in a row. Indonesia is very far from Europe not to mention America. The time difference itself is not so big, but most of the visiting chess players move to the southern hemisphere as well which made the 11 round tournament where in some days we had two rounds a day a gruesome experience. Last year I suffered a lot because top of that they use the FIDE time control with 90 minutes for the whole game plus 30 seconds increment after every move. In the final phase of the game I was usually too exhausted and horrible blunders happened. This year the Chinese players were missing because of their local club championship. Still there were nearly 50 players around a World. Many female players were present. The main attraction was the prize fund which included prizes for best women, junior etc. It reminded me the famous New York Open from the past, but somehow the tournament was not so strong relative to the prize fund. One of the reasons might be not so aggressive marketing of the festival. This was mentioned by Nigel Short in the opening ceremony. The point being that when you are not making a profit from the event you are not so eager to do the marketing as well. Local organizers were looking the only benefit to give local players the opportunity to compete with invited higher rated players. They succeeded in my opinion because a lot of Elo points were left in Jakarta by foreign players. The tournament itself was very well organized and had in my opinion sufficient number of players. Tournament details on http://www.chess-results.com/tnr113218.aspx?lan=1
Only thing as I mentioned already was very tight schedule. No free day and early morning rounds at 9.30 am in some days had some influence for older players. The biggest incident happened in round 6. When the first board game between Alexei Dreev and Alexander Moiseenko ended in 30 minutes. It was not so called grandmaster draw, also by regulations it was not allowed to agree a draw before move 30. What happened was that Moiseenko who had the white pieces was late more than 30 minutes and he was forfeited. It was immediately obvious that they are going to play again. This happened later in round nine and Moiseenko was white again trailing tournament leader by half a point. The game was drawn after interesting endgame where Moiseenko had an extra pawn, but Dreev showed excellent endgame skills and the pawn endgame was drawn. This two got the top honors despite the fact that Short beat Moiseenko in the final round and having not very good tournament got the third place in last moment. If you look the winners more closely you can see that all of them are relatively big guys. GHowever usually endurance is nothing to do how big you are. Ivan Sokolov who is regular in gym improved his result only with last round win. The favorites won this time, but who knows how the 6 round incident influenced the final results. Being late to the round happens time to time and unfortunately regular Open tournament players do not have seconds, coaches or managers who take care their everyday needs. Moiseenko did the typical thing, he woke up in time and then took a five minute nap which took more than expected. I had the sleep problem also before round 6. In nearly winning rook endgame I went for pawn race by “intuition” and I realized immediately that I was lost, but it was too late. In the evening game I blundered in winning position several times and I was lucky to have a draw. This cooled me down and with two wins in the finish I shared the places from 11th to 21. My original plan was to get plus 4, which turned out was actually good for second place. Still considering the circumstances I was satisfied with my result.
The tournament was in ideal surroundings. Everything was inside of the big hotel. Local food was free for players and who wanted to get some more specific food there was several restaurants in the first floor. The hotel rooms however differed from quality so some players had small advantage. Internet was improving comparing from last year. The city tour however was missing this year because organizers were concentrating only for the chess game, two extra rounds gave more opportunities to the local players to get experience however some visitors definitely lost the shopping and tourism opportunities.
Considering all this we hope that the tournament venue is moved to Bali and the American way, two rounds per day, is also removed from the schedule. The main message of this Open might be the meeting point of east and west. Chessplayers as representatives of many different cultures were present and the festival had very friendly atmosphere. I hope to meet with old and new friends in Indonesia very soon.
Special thanks to Utut Adianto the legendary local grandmaster who could not play himself because of his busy schedule as he is a member of the Regional Representative Council.
Jaan Ehlvest
