MALAYSIA WOMAN IN OLYMPIAD (THESSALONIKI 1984) -

Thessaloniki 1984.

For the first time Malaysia send their woman team.

Malaysian woman team, according to board order is as below:

1. Audrey Wong
2. Seto Wai Ling
3. Vimalavathy
4. Ong Y.M.

All unrated, all Olympiad first timer, all eager to show MCF decision to send woman team is not a mistake. So how did they performed?

The Performance

Top 5 finishers and Asean finisher is as below:

1.Soviet Union (Chiburdanidze, Levitina, Gaprindashvili, Semenova)

2.Bulgaria (Voiska, Gocheva, Chilingirova, Savova)

3.Romania (Muresan, Polihroniade, Nutu, Olarasu)

4.West Germany (Hund, Fischdick, Voklarova, Feustel)

5.China (Shilan, Mingqian, Yangfeng, Zhao Lan)

32.Malaysia

33.Indonesia (Wijayanti, Tamin, Wijaya, Nurjanah)

Overall Malaysia finished at 32 out of 51 teams. Collectively they played at 1850. Not bad, not bad at all....

Individually they have performed as below:

1. Audrey Wong (7.5/14) P=1906
2. Seto Wai Ling (5/12) P=1783
3. Vimalavathy (7.5/13) P=1879
4. Ong Y.M (1/3) P=1757

They have proved that MCF decision in sending woman team is not a mistake.

Trivia

1. Though officially finished at number 31, unofficially we finished sharing 27th place together with Greece A, Iceland, Italy, Austria and Finland.
2. Elo Performance wise Audrey is the best in team but percentage wise Vimalavathy is better. They both contributed 72% of Malaysian's points.

Below is nice attacking win from Audrey against Haahr (Denmark). Diagram below is after white played Qb2 to e2. Audrey played black.

28. ... Nd4

Audrey sacrificed a piece for two pawns!

29. ed4 Bd4
30. Kd2 Bc3
31. Rc3 Rc3

32. Kc3

32. ... Qe5
33. Kb4 Qd4
34.Ka3 Rf6
35. Be8 Ra6
36.Ba4

36. ... Ra4
37. ba4 Qc3 mate

A nice win!

Next stop.

Dubai 1986 (Malaysian chess finest hour)