After a scare in the 7th round – losing to IPCA by a slim margin 2.5-3.5, Team Malaysia bounced back to win 4-2 against Thailand to seal the deal to proceed to the next qualifying round. Regardless what the outcome would be in the final round, Team Malaysia smashed the nail into the coffin by beating South Korea 3.5-2.5 in the last round to top the group to comfortably secure its rightful place in the next Division 2 qualifying rounds.

WCM Chua Jia-Tien was the best performer for the team scoring a perfect 8 points from 8 games with WFM Puteri Rifqah Fahada scoring 7 wins and 2 draws to contribute 8 points from 9 games. Final team performance for all the individual Malaysia players are as follows:

Team Captain IM Mok Tze Meng will now wait for the draw to see which Pool in Division 2 Malaysia will be placed in, and the countries that it will have to face in the next Round Robin. By right, Malaysia is now ranked within the top 75 countries in the world and again, the top 3 teams from the 5 pools in Division 2, will continue to play in the Top Division with the 25 countries in the world where the Champion and Runner in each of the Pool will continue compete in the Championship style Knock Out stage to determine the World Online Team Chess Champion.

All the best to the the Malaysian Team!!! #togetherwecan #MalaysianBoleh