CHAPTER 84: ANOTHER GENIUS - ADITYA BAGUS ARFAN!

Aditya Bagus Arfan.

That was his name. However, all of his friends called him by his last name, Arfan. He was the recent prodigy in the Indonesian chess community, even bigger than Anna herself. After all, he was two years younger than Anna, only 13 years old. Hell, he was only one year older than Claudia, still studying in middle school, yet his rating was so close to Anna’s. No, not close. If anything, he should’ve been higher now.

Yeah, even though his official rating for this tournament was only 2226, that was only because the tournament showed his rating when he registered his name, which was about two or three weeks ago. However, Arfan had just arrived back from Spain for an open tournament in which he crushed almost all of his opponents, dominating the entire field where most of them had a far higher rating than him. In the end, he managed to get 7 points out of 9 rounds, gaining more than 100 ELO rating just in one tournament from beating three foreign Grandmasters and two IMs, while the last four games ended up as a draw. Even though in the end, he only got third place, this achievement was big enough to shake the entire Indonesian chess community.

Hell, he himself was just a Candidate Master (CM), probably the lowest title that didn’t include the women’s one. Some people didn’t even acknowledge that, still thinking that the lowest title should be the FIDE Master (FM). However, his phenomenal result in this tournament really gave Arfan his first GM norm, leaping out of a few staircases to get to the top instantly.

That was why Ummi said that he shouldn’t be in this category. Hell, if anything, putting him in the GM section would be beneficial not just for him, but also for the tournament. After all, another genius would definitely attract more attention. Unfortunately, when he registered for the tournament, Arfan’s rating was still below 2250, so he could only play in this section.

However, that didn’t discourage Arfan at all. Hell, if anything, the boy really used this tournament as a chance to farm more rating. Just from his first four games, he had already gained 22 points from sweeping all of his opponents, putting his rating over the benchmark 2350 in one go.

Of course, Sheva didn’t know about this information at all. However, he was still interested in the boy’s game, especially when Ummi said with conviction that he needed to be careful against Arfan. That basically told him that his next opponent would be Arfan when the young genius’s current opponent was Claudia. Sheva didn’t know about the boy, but he was very familiar with Claudia. He could tell that she was far from being weak. So, he was curious whether Arfan was ’definitely’ better than Claudia or not.

To his surprise, though, there were a lot of people surrounding their table, watching their game carefully. Hell, even his game didn’t receive that kind of attention, and he was playing against the top-seeded player. Still, Sheva couldn’t blame the crowd for not being interested in their game. After all, he himself was still quite a rookie who had just played in two formal tournaments, while Ummi herself was a fallen genius whose reputation had been falling for a while. Compared to them, it was definitely more interesting to watch the game between two prodigies, Arfan and Claudia.

Fortunately, Sheva was quite thin, so it was easy for him to sneak through the entire crowd and get to the front row to watch the game. He narrowed his eyes quickly after witnessing the current situation, trying to figure out which one of them had the advantage right now. The players themselves also had poker faces, not giving anyone any idea about their current thoughts.

’Ia should be at a disadvantage, but not that much that it would define the entire game directly, right?’ He frowned, muttering to himself. ’Besides the doubled-pawn on the B and E files, the game itself is pretty much equal. While yes, Arfan still has one passed pawn on the A file, it would be quite hard to let it slip into the promotion rank. His choice of attack is also not that much, with one rook blocking Ia’s escape road from the F file while his queen is staring from the G3 square. But other than that... There shouldn’t be a lot of things that the boy could do, right?’

*Author’s note: If you want to visualize the position better, check the comment below.

Yeah, even the computer engine evaluated that Arfan had a good advantage, -0.9. That basically told everyone that his position was so good that even the computer thought he was up a pawn. However, it wasn’t that easy to take advantage of that. No, if anything, in this kind of game, everything could still happen here. After all, they both were positional players, always wanting to go for the slow and solid approach, and for the next few minutes, they just shuffled their pieces back and forth without taking any action.

Sheva really didn’t know how a positional player like them could be this patient waiting for their chance to come. After all, he witnessed it with his own eyes how both Arfan and Claudia shifted their pieces for more than fifteen moves in a row, yet they didn’t improve their position at all. If anything, it looked like they were just trying to waste time here before resolving this matter with a draw.

’Wait!’ Sheva narrowed his eyes as he realized something. ’Does Ia want to drag this game into a draw? If so, that would definitely be her wisest decision here.’ Indeed, just based on this position only, Claudia’s pawn structure would give her a disadvantage if the game went to the endgame phase. This was something that she wouldn’t want to see on the board right now. That was why a draw result would be good for her in this case.

True enough, just like his prediction, it seemed Claudia wanted to aim for a draw here. She avoided any action like a plague, shifting her pieces away while also exchanging some minor pieces to simplify the game. It was clear that Arfan started to grow impatient too, as he started to push all of his pawns too eagerly. However, the lack of action created a predicament that this game would end in a draw.

Well... Or so that was what everyone thought.

Unfortunately, after playing for more than three hours and making more than 58 moves just in this game, Claudia finally showed her declining state. She started tilting, making a few inaccuracies that would impact her situation in the long run. Then, she panicked, and finally, the fatal blunder was made.