Cuba celebrated the closing of group D of the elite division in the Online Chess Olympiad, which already has the eight teams that will seek the medals.

Havana, September 11 (RHC)-- With a definitive fifth place and good impressions Cuba celebrated the closing of group D of the elite division in the Online Chess Olympiad, which already has the eight teams that will seek the medals.

An accumulated eight points out of a possible 16 took the Antillean team to the middle of the standings, behind Poland and the United States -both with 16 units-, Canada (13) and Peru (12).

"In general, we are satisfied with the performance. All the teams had strong players and we have to remember that the virtual game in chess involves other types of tensions in addition to the classical," coach-captain Rodney Perez told JIT, as a summary of the performance of his pupils.

Cuba bowed out with 2.5-3.5 losses to the Americans and 2-4 to Canada, but beat Brazil 4.5-1.5 in the final match. These results were followed by two more wins (Peru and Turkey), two draws (England and Colombia) and losses to Poland and the Netherlands.

"Playing online implies certain conditions, which sometimes become complicated from Cuba. For example, at times the electric power could go down in some of the venues, in others the network connection did not work at times and we had to switch to data...", explained Rodney about the internal issues that transcend what is later seen on the virtual boards.

For these reasons and also for what happened in terms of the quality of the games, the entire technical team was pleased with the result and some individualities were highlighted.

The female protagonism stood out thanks to the contribution of Oleiny Linares, with 4.5 points in six games, and she was followed among the biggest contributors by Yerisbel Miranda with 3.5 points in six games.

and Yerisbel Miranda with 3.5 points each in the same number of games.

The youth José Avelino Álvarez, one of the players under 20 years of age called by regulation, became the one with the greatest number of incursions. He participated in 17 games and accumulated 10 units, adding up all the games of the qualifying phase (division two) and Friday's farewell (top division).

Although he had only two scratches in five games at the highest level, national champion Carlos Daniel Albornoz assumed his role as leader of the team and faced the most complicated opponents.

Each team lined up with six boards and had to include at least two women and a pair of players under 20 years of age.

Kazakhstan and China qualified for the medal matches for section A, India and Hungary for section B, and Russia and Ukraine for section C