Asian Youth Games notes

BY: ANTHONY NAVARRO (Chess Windows Laguna Correspondent)

We were in the mood to do some summary via statistics per country as follows :

ELITE
In terms of champions, the performance per country were as follows :

COUNTRY	BOYS	GIRLS	TOTAL	CATEGORIES
China	3	1	4	U18 U16 U12 G8
India	1	2	3	U14 G18 G14
Vietnam	1	2	3	U8 G16 G12
Iran	1	0	1	U10
Mongolia	0	1	1	G10

CONTENDERS
In terms of top 5 finishers, this is a good indication of the volume of quality players that each country is coming up with through their respective programs or set-up:

COUNTRY	BOYS	GIRLS	TOTAL
India	12	11	23
China	7	7	14
Vietnam	1	5	6
Iran	4	2	6
Mongolia	1	2	3
Uzbekistan	3	1	4
Philippines	1	1	2
Kazhakstan	1	0	1
UAE	0	1	1

From the above breakdown, it is no surprise for the top 3 Asian powerhouses that we know to be India, China and Vietnam but we also noted Iran, Mongolia and Uzbekistan have their top players slugging it out too. The top 4 countries including Iran account for 49 out of the 60 contending players.

We already have a sense of it, but if we present it in terms of numbers, then we can realize HOW BIG is the gap, and if we continue to do the things we’re doing, then the gap will even get bigger !

Let’s have this SINK IN first, then I will follow with some ideas even with the current chess calendar we are having.

(NOTE: The 2010 Asian Youth Chess Championships was held in Beijing, China from July 9 to July 14, 2010, participated in by at least 14 countries.)