While China continue their dominance at the 7th Eastern Asian Youth Chess Championship hauling 6 gold medals out of the 12 offered, it was a promising and encouraging outing for our youngsters especially to Yee Hao Loong who managed to secure the Silver Medal in the U14 Standard Open event. Hao Loong was levelled with Samuel Lam from Hong Kong with 7.5 points each after 9 rounds of play. Both players drew when they met in the 3rd round, and surprisingly, both also lost their 8th round encounter against their respective opponent. However, Samuel had the better tie break giving him the edge for the Gold Medal leaving Hao Loong to settled for Silver.

On a more positive note, a few Malaysian players missed their podium finishes with Nirish Kumar ended in 4th place in the U16 category, and a string of players in the 5th position starting with Yeoh Yuan Hui in the U18 event, Koh Hui Qi in the U8 Girls event and Ashwiniy Kumaran in the U14 Girls event.

For the Rapid event, only Kavin Mohan managed to grab the Bronze medal in the U12 Category while most of the other Malaysians struggled to compete against their peers. On the team front, Malaysia managed to secure the Team Silver Medal due to a more consistent achievement from our youngsters.

There were other notable performance for our youngsters with Kavin Mohan securing the Gold Medal in the U12 Blitz, and Nirish Kumar earning the Bronze medal in the U16 Blitz event. Notable misses were Yee Hao Loong and Ashwiniy Kumaran who only managed to secure the 4th place in their respective age category.

In any event, kudos to our players and we hope that many more champions will come to the fore and provide more exhilarating challenges for us to be at the top of our game within the Region and within Asia.