I really want to do well: Hoang

By P. K. Ajith Kumar

NEW DELHI, NOV. 26. Two years ago she came to India for the first time and went back to Budapest as the World junior girls' chess champion. Then, earlier in the year she made another visit to India. This time she returned home as the Asian women's champion.

Hoang Thanh Trang is hoping India would prove lucky again for her. The eighth seed in the women's World championship says, she was surprised by the weather in Delhi. ``It is a pleasant surprise. I thought it could be very warm, but it is nice to find it is rather cool here,'' says the soft-spoken bespectacled girl, who represents Vietnam though she has been living in Budapest since the age of 10. ``So ten years in Vietnam and ten years in Budapest,'' she laughs.

Hoang just wanted to play good chess when she came to Kozhikode in 1998 for the World junior championship. She went on to win the title with a solid display. A beaming Hoang had told The Hindu that night that it was her greatest moment in life yet. ``I wasn't really expecting to win the World juniors, and that triumph gave me a lot of confidence,'' she recalls.

She struck gold in the Asian individual championship in Udaipur at the beginning of the year. ``Yes, India has been really kind to me. I just wish it continues that way.''

Hoang is excited about her first ever World women's championship. ``It is the biggest tournament in my career yet, and I really want to do well here. It is such a big event with most of the top players in the world,'' she says.

She doesn't think the knock-out system is going to bother her much. ``This system makes the tournament a little unpredictable, and anyway I feel quite a few players here are capable of winning the event.''

The 20-year-old had done quite well to get into the semifinals at the World Cup in China recently. She had beaten the women's World champion Xie Jun there. She has also recorded a win against Russia's Alisa Galliamova, seeded second here and one of the frontrunners for the title here, at the Olympiad.

Hoang, who has a rating of 2493 Elo points according to the October list of FIDE, is one of the best young talents in the women's game. She has always shown a steady improvement in her game.

She became a Woman Grandmaster at 15, and now just requires just one more norm to get the men's Grandmaster title. She made her two norms from the closed GM touraments in Budapest. She won one of those tournaments too, a category 8 event, finishing ahead of three male GMs.

Hoang is impressed by India's only WGM, S. Vijayalakshmi. She has played with her four times, and all the four games were drawn. They met last at the Olympiad at Istanbul. ``Vijayalakshmi was really amazing at the Olympiad. Her winning the silver was a great effort,'' she says.

The girl who loves music (she has learnt to play piano) is fiercely determined about her career. To become the World women's champion is her burning ambition now.

On Monday in the opening round Hoang meets a player in top form, Victorija Cmilyte of Lithuania, the gold medal winner on the top board at Istanbul. But she is confident that she will be able to do justice to her seeding. And, of course, how could India let her down?

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