ORLANDO HUSBANDS took a major step towards retaining gold after beating fellow Barbadians Yu Tien Poon and Bryan Prescod on the second day of the fifth CARIFTA Chess Championships in St Croix on Saturday.
Husbands, the reigning Under-20 champion overcame Poon in the morning session before prevailing against Prescod in the evening to complete his fourth successive victory and maintain a 100 per cent winning record.
The results left Husbands as the sole leader, one point ahead of his former Lodge School colleagues Poon and Prescod with three rounds of games remaining at the Divi Carina Bay Hotel.
Husbands, the highest rated player in the tournament who is now enrolled at the University of the West Indies, squared off against Poon, who has transferred to Harrison College in a contest that was expected to have a significant impact in determining the gold medal winner.
The victory for Husbands avenged a defeat he suffered against fellow FIDE master Poon at last November’s national championships.
Poon, the 2015 Under-16 champion, bounced back from the loss against Husbands to triumph over Anviti Adhin of Suriname and will face Prescod in the fifth round on Sunday morning.
Prescod, last year’s Under-20 bronze medallist, had earlier completed a third straight win by beating Mark Bueno of Aruba before going under to Husbands in the evening.
On another day that Barbados held their own to keep on course to retain the overall title, the 11-member team recorded 12 wins against seven defeats to follow up their 14 victories on the opening day.
The biggest disappointment of the day was a big stumble by reigning Under-12 champion Leigh Sandiford who lost to last year’s Under-8 gold medallist, Kishan Clarke of Jamaica and drew with unrated Ilya Stetsenko of Aruba.
Those setbacks left Sandiford in ninth place on two-and-a-half points, some distance behind front-runner Nathan Smith of Bahamas, who has won four games on the trot.
There were satisfying results for the Barbadian trio of Nitin Mahtani, Segan Sandiford and Azaria Johnson.
Mahtani, a student of Harrison College, was the joint leader in the Under-16 division with three-and-a-half points after drawing with last year’s Under-12 girls’ gold medalist Adani Clarke of Jamaica and beating the higher rated Brian Diaz of Aruba.
Segan Sandiford, who is also competing in Under-16, won both of her games on Saturday, the first against fellow Queen’s College student Kiara Eversley and the second against Nayan Bansal of United States Virgin Islands to occupy joint third place on three points.
Johnson also scored a double among the Under-12s, beating Thamara Sagastegvi of Aruba in the morning and fellow Charles F Broome student Yeshua Hill in the evening.
The two wins left Johnson as one of five players on three points, one behind the leader. (HG)
