18 November 2008
Nigeria remained in contention for honours at the ongoing World Chess Olympiad in Dresden Germany following her player's brilliant performances so far after three rounds of play.
Although Nigeria missed the opening round due to late arrival to Germany , National Master Adebayo Adegboyega, Folasayo Togun and veteran star Racheal Dappa have been able to propel the team on the individual board order medal.
Adegboyega, who is making his fourth appearance at the Olympiad was too much for his Fiji Island opponent in the second round as he led Nigeria into 3.5-0.5 win over Sanmagram Groundar with an Elo rating of 1896.
The Nigerian played thoroughly analysed plan at home and brought the game to a ruthless conclusion under 30 minutes just as debutants Benjamin Omorere and Bomo Kighiga won their games over Neel Arora (1887) Calvin Prasad (1888) respectively while Charles Campbell failed to complete the advantage over Manor Kumar (2019) and secured a forced draw.
However in the next round of 11 round-Swiss event pairing, Nigeria met its match in Belgium who paraded International Masters on all boards and while other players crumbled on their boards, Adegboyega fought like a Trojan against his opponent Cemil Gulbas (2371) who launched an unfounded attack on move 10 with g5 but white calmly controlled the centre with e4 on move 12 and after Nh2 on move 13 , a mini combination netted him an exchange and a pawn and made his opponent to resigned in the face of an advanced pawn promotion.
Although International Master Dapo Adu had an advantage over Richard Polaczek in the middle play, he blundered on move 23 with Nh2 and had to resign in the threat of losing his Queen some moves later.
Omorere was no match to Ekrem Cekro (2419) while Campbell was an easy prey to Bruno Lauret (2370) but the duo will aim to better their performance later today against another tough opponent South Korea .
In the female section, debutant Folasayo Togun was in brilliant performance against her Macau opponent Rio da Silva Nicole just as Dappa won against Salvador Jane Enerlan but Merit Uwa failed to take full advantage over Mak Kit Shu as both players shared honour. The team suffered a comprehensive defeat last night after losing on all boards to Bangladesh on all boards but team coach Lekan Adeyemi remained up beat that the country can still make an impact at both individual board order and Continental placement.
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