Sri Lanka’s national champion Ranindu Liyanage brought honour to the country when he bagged the Bronze Medal at the Asian Zonal Hybrid Chess Championship, which concluded yesterday.
In the final-round, Liyanage fought hard against the Bangladesh Grandmaster Enamul Hussain to force a draw and share 0.5 points each, which enabled him to secure the Bronze Medal.
Both players were determined to complete their matches on a winning note and figured in a rousing battle from the start in an attempt to collect the maximum points in this final hurdle.
In fact, Liyanage would have been in contention for the Gold Medal if he had collected the full points and also the possibility to play in the Chess World Cup 2021.
But eventually, Liyanage managed to end up with a total of six points out of nine games and had to settle with the third position in the event.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s young FIDE Master Susal de Silva met his countryman Buddhika Amarasinghe in the final-round and the game ended in favour of Amarasinghe.
Amarasinghe scored six points out of nine games and tied for the third place with five more players but finally, he reached the eighth place according to the tie-breaker points.
Susal had a total of five points out of nine games and finished in 13th place.
He also qualified for the FIDE Chess World Cup.
A total of US $3,000 were distributed among the winners with the champion receiving US $1,000, runner-up US $700 and the third place US $500.
A total of 39 players from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives and Sri Lanka participated in this event.
The Bangladesh Chess Federation conducted the event from Dhaka and the Sri Lankan players participated from the Headquarters of the Chess Federation of Sri Lanka in Gangodawila, Nugegoda.
(Daily News)
