GM Rustam Khusnutdinov of Kazakhstan won the event. Even though Rustam was a capable chess player but his victory came up as a bit surprise. He has switched his chess career into coaching rather than playing years ago. The event was his first classical tournament after long hiatus. He had been quite a while in Indonesia to work as a member of coaching staff in Indonesian National Training Center.
Piala Raja held the FMs section for the second time. The current edition had more players than the previous one. It involved 10 players with 5 host players alongside 5 guests. The purpose of the event was to give more playing time and chances to gain more ratings to the host players. The host also pinned their hope to their best player, Muhammad Kahfi Maulana, to race for the championship glory.
The qualification phase for individual and team events of the 20th PON was split into 5 zonals: Sumatra, Java, Bali-Borneo, Celebes, and Eastern Indonesia. The Java zonal qualification took place at the city of Cilacap, Central Java. This zonal was undoubtedly the most competitive zonal of all with star studded participants such as teams from West Java, DKI Jakarta, and East Java.
The chess match became an event for the Indonesian hopeful young talent IM Novendra Priasmoro to hunt the Grand Master (GM) title. His current Elo rating, 2495, was still shy away from the minimum requirement of 2500. In this match Novendra was going to play Vietnamese GM Nguyễn Anh Dũng for 6 rounds. Novendra was required to score 4 points or more to obtain the GM title.
