"Okay, I am officially confused right now," Bagas spoke as the host of the broadcast with eyes full of questions. "What is going on here? I mean, Master Irfan, can you explain this?" He asked the expert about the room.

"Well, first of all, you don't need to be an official to get confused, you know?" Irfan smiled playfully at the jab he himself threw at Bagas. "Secondly, care to tell us the source of your confusion? I mean, I cannot even see anything strange in this game."

"Haha, very funny, Master Irfan." Bagas just rolled his eyes sarcastically at the man's first answer. "What I am very puzzled about is still the same as yesterday. It is Sheva's strange style choice! I mean, it is just not like him, going for a near-endgame phase this early and trying to outmatch his opponent with his calculation skill. Oh, don't get me wrong, it is not like I don't like or don't approve this style, since I know several players who are thriving in this kind of system. Still… It is not for Sheva!"

Poor man, he was about to crash out here.

Before getting involved in the chess world, Bagas was an internet addict who liked to watch a competition like this, so whenever he saw something that he couldn't understand from what the player was doing in the middle of the game, he would start questioning everything to the point that he had an existential crisis. That was just a normal behavior from the viewers of any gaming competition in the world.

"Well… I don't really know his reasoning here…" Irfan pondered for a moment. "It might be because he found something about Yu Yangyi in his research that leads him into doing this, or it might be because he is confident about his own preparation here. Nevertheless, I don't think that Sheva is going to have a big problem here, as he is also an excellent youngster in an endgame phase."

Well, yeah, Bagas also admitted the last part. He knew from Sergei's testament that Sheva's improvement in the endgame was the best among those whom he taught. However, that wasn't the problem. No, the fat boy was still lamenting over the fact that Sheva didn't go for his usual playing style, which made him think that his best friend was not confident in pulling it off against his opponent this round.

Little did he know, though, that his confusion only made things worse for his best friend, as the internet trolls started to use his argument to attack Sheva.

Lucky_guy4545: Haha! No need to be confused, because he is not fucking serious in this game!

BELLZ11: Yeah! Who the fuck would try to play something that is not his fucking style against one of the best players in the world?! What a waste of a chance!

Zgib123: Fucking hell, let that embarrassment go back home and replace him with the other more serious players like Arfan or even Master Susanto! He is not even serious in this tournament, so why would the sponsor still give him their money?! Is that a new type of scam or what?!

Mr_prez: You know what, I agree with you @Zgib123. It seems that BNI is filled with a lot of idiotic people! They cannot even see that they are being scammed here!

Bagas felt the corner of his mouth twitching when he read the comment there. He knew that it was impossible to wipe out all the trolls just in one night, but this was ridiculous. Sheva was probably the player who deserved criticism the least here, considering his performance was the best compared to Medina and Anna. This wasn't just a criticism anymore, but pure hate targeting his best friend.

'Oh, fucking hell! Why do they keep popping up and growing more like a fucking bunch of pests?!' Bagas cursed inwardly, his hand moving fast to operate the laptop to block those trolls one by one. 'Man, this is fucking endless! Sheva, please, for your sake, don't lose the game, or you are screwed!'

Of course, Sheva himself didn't really know the situation behind the scenes. Even if he knew, though, nothing would change, because he himself also didn't understand the why and how of this situation. Hell, his panicked and frustrated state would only make it worse for Bagas, so it was better for him to stay away from this situation.

Currently, he was fighting for his life against Yu Yangyi, who, somehow, was still patient enough to wait for him to make the first move here. They had been dilly-dallying for a while, shifting their pieces back and forth aimlessly without doing anything significant to make the game progress into a new direction.

Almost two hours had passed since the beginning of the game, and although more than half of the board was cleared already, the game itself lacked action, as if neither player wanted to take the initiative to do something here. This was definitely a very ugly sight to watch, and if anyone didn't know better, they would've thought that both players conspired with each other before the game to get a draw result like this.

Hell, if this were any other sport, those two players would've been under scrutiny from all the people who watched this, and in the worst scenario, they would be accused of doing some sort of match fixing here.

Unfortunately, chess was a special case here. This was the sport where a prearranged draw could be made by both players, even without them having to talk to each other beforehand. They just needed to follow the particular opening line that a lot of legendary players had done so in the past, like the Berlin Draw that Vladimir Kramnik pulled against Garry Kasparov in the world championship match more than twenty years ago.

Compared to that, this game was pretty tame. Not to mention that the stake was far lower than the world championship match that those two legends played in the past, but at least, both Sheva and Yu Yangyi still tried to do something here, even though Sheva didn't really hide his intention at all since the beginning of the game.

'Come on, why are we still doing this shit?! Just repeat the move and let's end this game soon, Mister!'

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