The Asian Indoor Games are the brand new competition held biennially. The premier edition took place in Thailand in 2005, but chess was not part of the games. The 2007 games were hosted by Chinese autonomous region Macau. There were three team competitions scheduled for different time controls: classical, rapid and blitz as well as men's and women's individual blitz competition.
The classical chess event was a six round Swiss. Each team had right to field up to three men and three women with each match being played at two men's and two women's board. Unfortunately a lot of teams weren't able to field necessary number of players, this resulting in numerous forfeits that spoiled the spirit of play a bit. The competition was very strong with more than 20 GMs aboard. China and India were two strongest sides. Chinese team saw GMs Bu Xiangzhi, Ni Hua, Xu Yuhua and prodigy WGM Hou Yifan. India's team consisted of four superb players: GM Sasikiran, GM Ganguly, GM Humpy and IM Harika.
Indeed, these two combatted for gold. With a thumping 3-1 victory in round 4 China paved their way to gold. India took silver while bronze went to Vietnam who got back to game after 3-1 loss to Qatar on round two. Vietnam's two 2-2 ties vs China and India on the last day let them keep the podium position won on tie-splitting vs Malaysia, Kazakhstan and Indonesia. Third seeds Qatar played extremely bad chess to finish in miserable 12th. Best individual results were obtained by Chinese Ni Hua and Hou Yifan — 5½/6.
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