Chess player Phuong Thao is proud of her SEA Games 32 gold medal.

On the afternoon of May 2, the Vietnamese chess team won the first gold medal for the Vietnamese Sports Delegation at the 32nd SEA Games.

Chess player Pham Thanh Phuong Thao shared after winning the match: "I am really happy and proud to be able to win this gold medal and also my first SEA Games gold medal.

Before that, I won 2 gold medals at the National Team Championship. The two teams, the Philippines and Thailand, are very strong, they play very solidly, to win you have to think a lot."

Kỳ thủ Phương Thảo tự hào với tấm HCV SEA Games 32 - 1 — Phuong Thao and Hong An celebrate after securing the gold medal before the final round (Photo: Manh Quan).

Before this afternoon's match, Phuong Thao and Ton Nu Hong An had surpassed their direct competitors for the gold medal from the Philippines. Previously, both teams had 4 points after 4 consecutive wins.

In the first leg, Phuong Thao had a draw while Hong An won brilliantly. In the second leg, if only one goal ended in a draw, Vietnam would have won the gold medal due to the advantage in time coefficient. Phuong Thao quickly got a draw, meaning that the Vietnamese team won the first gold medal at the 32nd SEA Games.

Kỳ thủ Phương Thảo tự hào với tấm HCV SEA Games 32 - 2 — Pham Thanh Phuong Thao played excellently to help the Vietnamese chess team win the first gold medal at the 32nd SEA Games (Photo: Manh Quan).

This is the first time Vietnamese conch players compete at the SEA Games, which is a very positive signal affirming the thinking of Vietnamese people.

According to the Organizing Committee's plan, the gold medal award ceremony will be held on May 6 when the conch chess event finishes all events.

At the 32nd SEA Games, the host Cambodia decided to drop chess and introduce Ouk Chaktrang (snail chess), which is their strength. This chess game has some similarities to chess in that it uses a board with 64 squares and each player holds 16 chess pieces.

The pieces in Chinese checkers also include a king, a queen, 2 rooks, 2 knights, 2 bishops and 8 pawns. However, the basic difference between Chinese checkers and chess is the arrangement of the pieces and the way each piece moves.

Regarding the competition time, in the blitz category of chess, each player has 3 minutes in each game, plus 2 seconds for each move, but in the conch, each side has 5 minutes in each game but there is no additional time, the side that runs out of time first without checkmating the opponent will lose, even if they have the advantage in the game.

When the information that SEA Games 32 will feature Ouk Chaktrang chess, the Vietnam Chess Federation has just started to include this sport in the national competition program at the end of 2022.

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