World finals in December

THE executive council of the World Chess Federation (FIDE), which met earlier this month in Bled, Slovenia, has unanimously approved the staging of the World Chess Championship finals this December. The event will be played in Las Vegas and carry a prize fund of US$3mil (about RM11.4mil).

This resolution is seen as further endorsement of the decision by FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov to change the two-year world championship cycle to an annual event.

Ilyumzhinov, who chaired the executive council meeting, said his action was motivated by the need to seize the initiative after the success of the last world championship in Groningen and Lausanne, which was held under the patronage of the International Olympic Committee.

The council lauded Ilyumzhinov's offer to increase the prize fund from US$5mil (RM19mil) to US$6mil (RM22.8mil) over two years, and noted that the rules and regulations used in last year's event provided an adequate legal framework for the change.

The regulations will be finalised by a committee which will set November as the deadline for the world championship cycle qualifiers to sign their player's contracts with FIDE.

The council re-emphasised the decision adopted at last year's general assembly in Kishinev that top players would not be granted any special privilege that could be seen as giving them an unfair sporting advantage over other participants.

At the last world championship cycle, FIDE was heavily criticised for allowing Anatoly Karpov direct entry into the final match against Viswanathan Anand. It was felt at that time that Anand, after having survived an exhausting knock-out series of games in Groningen, would be too tired to play against a fresh Karpov.

From this year's event, the world champion will be required to join the knock-out series from the second round. A number of other top players like Gary Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik will also enter the world championship from the second round.

According to FIDE, these players will be chosen based on their best average ratings from the January and July rating lists this year.

Also approved at the executive council meeting was a proposal to increase the number of zonal qualifiers. It was hoped that this move would encourage the top players to participate in their respective national championships and zonal events.

Meanwhile, in another discussion by the FIDE executive council, Ilyumzhinov insisted that the national chess federations must get their national Olympic committees to support the move to recognise chess as a sport.

So far, FIDE has received 49 letters signed by various national Olympic committees. He wanted another 50 letters before officially asking the International Olympic Committee's secretariat to put the matter into its agenda.

Up next

Johor open: Organised by the Johor Chess Association with assistance from Pelangi Berhad, this event will be staged at the Menara Pelangi on June 7. It will be played over six Swiss rounds and divided into the open, under-16 and under-12 sections. Winners will get cash prizes.

Entry fees for the open section are RM10 for men and RM6 for women. Players have to pay RM6 to join the under-16 event, and RM5 for the under-12. For entry forms or more details, call Sumathy ( 07-332 4366), Wong ( 07-333 0931), Lim ( 07-861 5951) or Cheong ( 016-720 2272). Entries will close next Friday at 4pm.

National age-group: The Malaysian Chess Federation will hold the national age-group championship in Shah Alam from June 5 to 7. Although medals will only be given to the winners this year, the MCF will continue to select players from this event to play in the world age-group championship later in the year.

Malaysia-Singapore: The annual Malaysia-Singapore match will be played at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur on June 27 and 28.

Royal Selangor open: The Royal Selangor silver jubilee open chess tournament is now on at the Sunway College in Subang Jaya, Selangor (final on Sunday).

Sakura Selangor girls junior: This two-day event starts tomorrow at the Sunway College.

Penang Bayview League: The eighth Penang Bayview Chess League will kick off on June 7 at The City Bayview Hotel. The games will be played every Sunday until mid-August. Entry fees are RM150 per team and there will be cash prizes for the top teams in each of the three divisions.

Closing date for entries is tomorrow, and a managers' meeting will take place at the hotel next Wednesday at 8pm. For more details, call Goh Yoon Wah ( 04-644 5687), Ooi Kiem Boo ( 04-826 3764) or Eoh Hook Kim ( 04-826 0196) in the evenings.

Penang AGM: The Penang Chess Association will hold its annual general meeting on Sunday at the Bayan Baru Residents Association clubhouse. The meeting at 6pm will be preceded by a blitz tournament one hour earlier. Members of the association who wish to play in the blitz event are required to be at the clubhouse by 4pm. There will be dinner for the members after the meeting.

Game of the week

REMEMBER the World Chess Council which was formed by Gary Kasparov and Luis Rentero last March to look into staging a match between Kasparov and the winner of another match between Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand?

When Anand refused to be associated with this World Chess Council, Rentero decided that Alexei Shirov would take Anand's place in the match. Two months down the road, the match between Kramnik and Shirov finally began last Sunday in Cazorla, Spain.

The first game of the match was drawn after 25 moves. For most of the game, the players followed chess opening theory. The match will be played over 10 games. Here is the first game:

Kramnik vs Shirov

1. d4 Nf6, 2. c4 g6, 3. Nc3 d5, 4. cxd5 Nxd5, 5. e4 Nxc3, 6. bxc3 Bg7, 7. Bc4 0-0, 8. Ne2 c5, 9. 0-0 Nc6, 10. Be3 Bg4, 11. f3 Na5, 12. Bd3 cxd4, 13. cxd4 Be6, 14. Rc1 Bxa2, 15. Qa4 Bb3 16. Qb4 b6, 17. Bg5 f6, 18. Bf4 e5, 19. Be3 exd4, 20. Nxd4 Bf7, 21. Ba6 Re8, 22. Rfd1 Qe7, 23. Qxe7 Rxe7, 24. Nc6 Nxc6, 25. Rxc6 (1/2-1/2)

 

Gearing up for local tournaments

THERE are a number of local chess events organised by various chess organisations around the country during the next one month or so.

For starters, the Malaysian Chess Federation will organise the national age-group championship at the Majlis Perbandaran Shah Alam building from June 5 to 7.

According to the Federation's secretary, Hamid Majid, this year's championship will be held on a smaller scale because sponsorship has not been forthcoming. As a result, there will not be any cash prizes for the winners. Instead, the various age-group winners will be given medals.

Hamid also said that the winners will be selected to play in the world age-group championship later in the year.

The Federation has also slotted in the annual Malaysia-Singapore match on June 27 and 28. This match will be played at the Putra World Trade Centre, and the visitors housed at the Stamford Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

Meanwhile, it is learnt that the Labour Day team tournament in Kuala Lumpur has been postponed indefinitely.

Bera Chess Open

In Pahang, The Persatuan Catur Daerah Bera will organise a three-day open chess tournament starting today at the Dewan Majlis Daerah Bera. This is a seven-round event with a time-control of 1 1/2 hours per player for each game.

The prize fund is quite attractive, with a RM700 first prize, a RM500 second prize and a RM400 third prize. There are seven other prizes ranging from RM300 to RM100. Entry fees are RM15 for members of the Persatuan Catur and RM50 for non-members.

As the first round will start at 2.30pm today, readers planning to take part should contact Zakaria Saleh ( 09-255 6103), Mohd Fadzal Hamid ( 09-255 7823) or Ghazali Mamat ( 09-255 5370) immediately.

Accommodation is not provided for outstation players but, according to the organisers, there are a number of hotels nearby which offer reasonable room rates.

Royal Selangor Open

The Royal Selangor silver jubilee open chess tournament — which is the highlight of the month-long silver jubilee activities of the Chess Association of Selangor — will be played at the Sunway College in Subang Jaya from May 27 to 31.

Several top players from around the country are expected to play in this nine-round Swiss event. There will be 20 cash prizes, including a first prize of RM1,500, a second prize of RM1,000 and a third prize of RM700.

The minor prizes range from RM500 for the fourth-placed winner, to RM60 each for those who finish 11th to 20th in the tournament. Trophies are also awarded to the top three winners.

In addition, there are cash prizes of RM50 each for the best woman and the best under-16 players if they score at least 50% in the tournament. Those who do not qualify for any of the cash prizes will be eligible to take part in five lucky draws during the closing ceremony.

Entry fees for the Royal Selangor silver jubilee open tournament are RM35 for Chess Association of Selangor members, RM50 for members of clubs that are affiliated to the CAS, and RM60 for other players. International masters and the visually handicapped players are given free entry to this tournament.

Readers are reminded that, apart from this event, the CAS's silver jubilee blitz tournament will be held tomorrow and on Sunday, and the Sakura Selangor junior girls tournament will be played on May 30 and 31.

Anyone interested in taking part should contact either Jackie Wong ( 03-703 8237) or Lim Tse Pin ( 03-733 0927) for more details or registration.

Eighth Penang Chess League

The Penang Chess Association's eighth Penang Bayview Chess League will start on June 7 at the City Bayview Hotel. The hotel, which donated a 45cm pewter challenge trophy worth RM6,000 in 1993, will sponsor the use of its premises for the championship which will be played on Sundays until mid-August.

Only teams legitimately representing the public and private sectors, institutions of learning and registered associations, societies and clubs are allowed to play in the league. A guest player may be included in each team, but the other players must strictly be employees, students or members of the organisation they represent.

In the past, the organisers recognised the fact that there were several players who were interested in playing in the league but could not do so because they were not accepted as guest players on any of the teams. For this year's event, the organisers are requesting that these players contact the Penang Chess Association immediately. If the response is encouraging enough, the association will consider grouping them together to play under its banner.

Provision has been made for about 24 teams to take part, and each team is allowed up to eight players. However, only four players from each team will play in every round.

This year's event will again be split into three divisions. The third division will comprise teams of mainly novice players, while the first and second divisions will be made up of the teams that have been taking part regularly in previous chess leagues.

Entry fees are RM150 per team and cash prizes are guaranteed for the top teams in each of the three divisions. Closing date for entries is May 30, and a managers' meeting will take place at the hotel on June 3 at 8pm.

For more details, contact Goh Yoon Wah ( 04-644 5687), Ooi Kiem Boo ( 04-826 3764) or Eoh Hook Kim ( 04-826 0196) in the evenings.

Meanwhile, the Penang Chess Association will hold its annual general meeting on May 31 at the Bayan Baru Resident's Association clubhouse. The 6pm meeting be preceded by a blitz tournament one hour earlier.

Members who wish to play in the blitz event are required to be at the clubhouse by 4.30pm. There will be dinner for the members after the meeting.

Batu Gajah events

There will be two tournaments this Sunday at SK Toh Indera Wangsa Ahmad in Batu Gajah, Perak. The first is the Batu Gajah open tournament and the second, the Batu Gajah under-12 closed tournament.

Both are six-round events. Registration for the tournaments will be from 8am and the first round is expected to start at 9.10am. For details, call Azmi Ishak ( 05-365 1848) or W.K. Wong ( 05-366 1692).

Kalmyk tournament winding down

THE strong knock-out tournament in Elista, in the Russian republic of Kalmykia, which I wrote about last week, has reached the semi-final stage. Of the original 32 players in the field, only four are left.

In the first of the two semi-final encounters, Evgeny Bareev (of Russia) will play the Ukraine's Vassily Ivanchuk. The second semi-final match is between Alexander Khalifman and Alexei Dreev, both Russians. So far, their first games have ended drawn.

Earlier, in the quarter-final stage of the knock-out event, Ivanchuk had triumphed easily over Armenia's Rafael Vaganian. Bareev, Khalifman and Dreev had taken slightly longer to dispose of their respective opponents, Konstantin Sakeav, Sergei Tiviakov and Valery Salov.

The knock-out event began in Elista, the Kalmyk capital, on May 6. At stake is a US$100,000 prize fund raised by the Kalmyk president, Kirsan ljumzhinov, who is also the president of the World Chess Federation.

The official tournament web site is located at http://www.ruschess.com. When I visited the site, what struck me was that the official flag of the Kalmyk Republic is an open lotus flower. Furthermore, the President's Cup is adorned with an etched picture of the Buddha — all this from a land that was formerly Communist, under the old Soviet Union's regime!

But it seems that there is good reason for these symbols: the people of Kalmykia are predominantly Buddhists. The republic was settled by Chinese migrants in the 17th century who managed to retain their beliefs and culture even under Communist rule.

 

Mishap upsets event

LAST week in the Russian republic of Kalmykia, its president Kirsan Iljumzhinov — who is also president of the World Chess Federation — was about to stage a strong knock-out tournament when news of an accident on the outskirts of the nation's capital Elista came through.

Former women's world champion Maia Chiburdanidze, Georgian Chess Federation president Zurab Azmaiparashvili and Kiril Georgiev were in a car travelling from Volvograd to Elista when their driver tried to overtake another vehicle along the narrow road but met a third one coming from the opposite direction.

According to reports from Elista, the driver avoided a head-on collision but he lost control of the car, causing it to roll down a hill.

Chiburdanidze, who was beside the driver, was thrown from the car; she suffered severe knocks on her head and multiple contusions on the chest and liver regions.

Luckily for her, the accident occurred near a village hospital about 15km from Elista. She was taken to the hospital and her condition is reportedly stable and not critical.

Azmaiparashvili and Georgiev, who were in the backseat, suffered minor head injuries and scratches.

Iljumzhinov later postponed the tournament by one day, with the agreement of the other players who were all upset by the bad news.

The knock-out event was originally due to begin on May 5 in Elista with a US$100,000 prize money. This tournament for the President's Cup was supposed to have been the Russian Championship which has since been postponed to July in St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) but Iljumzhinov decided that his event should still proceed as planned.

And since it was no longer an internal Russian event, Iljumzhinov was able to attract a much stronger field with some players from outside Russia also taking part.

To get an idea of the strength of this tournament, the grandmasters in this 32-player field are Valery Salov, Evgeny Bareev, Sergei Rublevsky, Alexander Khalifman, Vadim Zvjaginsev, Sergei Tiviakov, Alexey Dreev, Konstantin Sakeav, Evgeny Sveshnikov, Ildar Ibragimov, Alexander Galkin, Marat Makarov, Alexander Fominyh and Alisa Galliamova (all from Russia), Vassily Ivanchuk, Alexander Onischuk, Vladimir Tukmakov and Vladimir Malaniuk (all from Ukraine), Boris Gelfand and Aleksej Aleksandrov (both from Belarus), Vladimir Akopian and Rafael Vaganian (both from Armenia), Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria), Mikhail Gurevich (Belgium), Jaan Ehlvest (Estonia), Viktor Bologan (Moldavia), and Georgi Giorgadze (Georgia).

When I looked at this list of players, it struck me that if the Soviet Union had not disintegrated in 1991, this tournament in Elista would just about qualify as the Soviet championship itself.

Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Estonia, Moldavia and Georgia were all formerly a part of the Soviet Union, and Mikhail Gurevich, now playing for Belgium, was a former Soviet player.

Only Georgiev stood out differently from the rest of the players.

In the first stage of the knock-out event over last weekend, Ivanchuk beat Ehlvest 2-0, Zvjaginsev beat Makarov 2 1/2-1 1/2, Georgiev beat Sveshnikov 1 1/2-1/2, Vaganian beat Shovunov 2-0, Bologan beat Akopian 1 1/2-1/2, Sakaev beat Erendzhenov 2-0, Bareev beat Tukmakov 2-0, Gurevich beat Poddubny 1 1/2-1/2, Gelfand beat Malaniuk 2-0, Tiviakov beat Galliamova 4 1/2-3 1/2, Khalifman beat Galkin 1 1/2-1/2, Aleksandrov beat Lusto 2-0, Rublevsky beat Ibragimov 2-0, Dreev beat Kozak 1 1/2-1/2, Salov beat Onischuk 1 1/2-1/2 and Giorgadze beat Fominyh 4-3.

I shall have more news for you next week but in the meantime, readers with Internet access can visit the official tournament web site at http://www.ruschess.com .

Mak is Selangor junior champion

THE 12th Royal Selangor juniors open tournament on May 1 and 2 was the first of several activities organised by the Chess Association of Selangor in conjunction with its silver jubilee celebrations.

Despite losing to Lim Yee Weng in the sixth round, Mak Weng Yee was declared winner of the 29-player under-18 section of the tournament due to a better tiebreak. Both players had scored 5 1/2 points from the seven-round event.

Given the tie-break system which is commonly used in such events, it would be almost impossible for players who lose in the early rounds of a tournament to score highly on tie-breaks. In Lim's case, the title slipped from his hands after a surprising loss to Samantha Lee in the third round.

In joint third and fourth places were Wong Ziwei and Premnaath with five points each. Samantha Lee, Wong Kat Fooi, Choo Voo Koon, Chua Lin Kiat, Marina Soh and Law Zhe Kang scored four points each.

The under-14 section of the tournament was won by Perak schoolboy Aaron Yee who obtained 6 1/2 points from seven games. The second place went to Gerald Soh with six points, while sharing the third to sixth prizes with 5 1/2 points each were Effahrin Farid, Wong Zi Chuan, Choi Wai Yew and Ragu Ram.

This was the most popular age-group event of the junior tournament with 60 players taking part. The third age-group category was the under-10 section which attracted 28 players.

Effaliana Farid was the winner with 6 1/2 points and second was Ooi Ching Chung with six points. Hemnaath scored five points to take the third prize while the fourth to ninth places were shared by Thaw Chee How, Chan Tze Chen, Eric Ng Keng Gee, Mo Kim Hung, Gavin Ng Khai Wei and Lee Su Lynn who obtained 4 1/2 points each.

On May 3, the Chess Association of Selangor organised a six-round Allegro tournament that attracted 40 participants. Mohd Saprin Sabri was the winner with 5 1/2 points, followed by Lim Yee Weng and Azhari Mohd Nor with five points each, and Chay Joon Hoong and Lau Tze Thong with 4 1/2 points each.

This weekend, the second half of the Royal Selangor juniors open tournament will take place at the Sunway College in Subang Jaya. This will be for the under-12, under-16 and under-20 age-groups.

On May 23 and 24, the CAS silver jubilee blitz tournament will be organised and this event will be followed by the Royal Selangor silver jubilee open chess tournament from May 27 to 31.

The Sakura Selangor junior girls tournament will be played on May 30 and 31.

For all these events, intending participants can call Mrs Jackie Wong (03-703 8237) or Lim Tse Pin (03-733 0927) for registration details.

Perak Grand Prix

The Perak International Chess Association will hold the next stage of their nine-leg chess grand prix at the Perpustakaan Tun Razak in Ipoh this weekend.

Six rounds are scheduled for the two-day event, and the time control will be 60 minutes per player for each game. Only players who are born, residing, working or studying in Perak are eligible to take part.

The overall grand prix standings will be based on the best five tournament performances of each player and the top 24 players at the end of the series will qualify for the state championship in September. The interim grand prix standings will also be used for selecting Perak players to national events like the Merdeka team championship.

Those interested in playing this weekend must register at the playing venue by 1.15pm tomorrow. For details, call W.K. Wong (05-366 1692).

 

Solo strike for Lim

I CAN safely say that in all the 25 years of the Malaysian Chess Federation's existence, the handful of local players in the World Chess Federation's international rating list had the MCF to be thankful for.

If not for the MCF having organised international rating tournaments on our shores or sent our players to play in international events, they would surely not have obtained their international ratings on their own accord.

Take, for example, the recently concluded Asian cities team chess championship in Genting Highland, Pahang. Ahmad Maliki and Ng Tze Han were the two local players to meet the minimum criterion for obtaining their first international ratings. Could they have done so without the MCF giving them the opportunity to play in this event? I very much doubt it.

In the wake of what I have just written, the feat of Lim Chin Lee is, therefore, of great significance to Malaysian chess. Lim, on his own initiative, took part in a rating tournament at the second New Hampstead chess festival in England last March and came away a joint winner of the event.

The New Hampstead chess festival comprised three tournaments: a grandmaster event, an international master event and a rating event. Lim approached the organisers of the chess festival and was accepted into the rating tournament. This was a 10-player round-robin event with four rated players in the field.

According to Lim, he was surprised to win the tournament. He admitted to being very lucky. Lim played with unrated opponents in the first five rounds and his score of 4 1/2 points gave him confidence.

"I beat the lowest rated player (Angus James) in the sixth round, then drew with Adam Raoof in the seventh round. I am quite happy with that because I had lost to him in last year's British Rapid Play tournament," Lim said.

"My loss to Ben Savage, who is from Oxford University, frustrated me because if I had beaten him I would have secured my sole first placing.

"However, I managed to beat Marcus Osbourne in the last round. He was the highest rated player in the event.... I never expected to get first place. My initial target was just to get a rating," he said.

So who is this Lim Chin Lee?

He is a first-year mechanical engineering student at the Britain's University of Leeds. He claims to be a "chess maniac" and has just been appointed captain of his university's chess team. Some readers will have recognised him as one of Klang's home-grown players.

In 1994, he was the under-18 winner of the national age-group tournament in Shah Alam. This earned him a trip to Szeged in Hungary later in the year, where he took part in the under-18 section of the World Age-Group tournament.

Lim had also played in the Malaysian Schools Sports Council's chess championship in 1994, where he helped Selangor to win the under-20 team title.

His last event in Malaysia, before he left for England, was last year's Merdeka team chess championship in which his team, Independent Star, took the fourth prize.

Lim's future chess-playing plans will depend greatly on how he can juggle chess with his studies.

"If there are tournaments during my holidays, then most probably I won't miss the opportunity to play," he said. "My next target is to increase my rating so that I can participate in the IM tournament."

Selangor Events

May 9-11: Chess Association of Selangor (CAS) inter-team tournament for institutions of higher learning in the Klang Valley

May 16-17: Royal Selangor juniors open tournament (under-12, under-16 and under-20 age categories)

May 23-24: CAS silver jubilee blitz tournament

May 27-31: Royal Selangor silver jubilee open chess tournament

May 30-31: Sakura Selangor junior girls tournament

Contact persons: Mrs Jackie Wong (03-703 8237) or Lim Tse Pin (03-733 0927). Sponsors are Royal Selangor, Sakura Cafe and Cuisine, and Sunway College.

Northern exposure

THE Penang Chess Association will organise the eighth Penang Bayview Chess League starting June 7 at The City Bayview Hotel.

The hotel, which donated an 18in pewter challenge trophy worth RM6,000 in 1993, will sponsor the use of their premises for the championship which shall be played on Sundays until mid-August.

Only teams which legitimately represent the public and private sectors, institutions of learning and registered associations, societies and clubs are allowed to play in the league.

A guest player may be included in each team, but the other players in the team must strictly be employees, students or members of the organisation which they represent.

In the past, the organisers have recognised that there were several players who were interested to play in the league but could not do so because they were not accepted as guest players in any of the teams.

For this year's event, the organisers are requesting that these players contact the PCA immediately. If the response is encouraging enough, the PCA will consider grouping them together to play under the association's banner.

Provision has been made for about 24 teams to take part, and each team is allowed up to eight players. However, only four players from each team will play in every round.

This year's event will again be split into three divisions. The third division will comprise teams of mainly novice players, while the first and second divisions will be made up of the more regular teams that have been taking part in previous chess leagues.

Entry fees are RM150 per team and cash prizes are guaranteed for the top teams in each of the three divisions. Closing date for entries is May 30, and a managers' meeting will take place at the hotel on June 3 at 8pm.

For more details, contact Goh Yoon Wah (04-644 5687), Ooi Kiem Boo (04-826 3764) or Eoh Hook Kim (04-826 0196) in the evenings. Chess enthusiasts can contact Quah Seng Sun via e-mail (ssquah@schach.pc.my). His chess articles are archived at Malaysia On-Line which readers can visit at http://www.mol.com.my

 

Selangor's silver jubilee celebration

TODAY signals the start of the month-long silver jubilee activities of the Chess Association Of Selangor, one of the oldest and most active chess associations in the country.

I remember attending the inaugural general meeting of the CAS way back in 1974. My name should be there as a founder member of the association, although, admittedly, my membership lapsed a long time ago after I returned to Penang.

There was a big group of chess enthusiasts gathered at the La Salle Secondary School in Petaling Jaya, and a very colourful and vocal figure, K.C. Lee, was elected as the association's first president. J.J. Singam, if I remember correctly, was the first secretary of the CAS.

Although there were already some chess activities in Kuala Lumpur in those days, particularly the weekly games sessions at the Royal Selangor Club, every chess player in the area looked forward to the CAS' first chess tournament.

This was the Selangor open chess tournament, which was held at the Royal Selangor Club. At that time I was a student in Petaling Jaya, fully dependent on public transportation, but I made it a point to be at the RSC to take part in this tournament. I have stories to tell of my chess adventures in Selangor, but they are better left to another occasion.

Coming back to the CAS silver jubilee, the first item on their calendar is the two-day 12th Royal Selangor juniors open tournament, for the under-10, under-14 and under-18 age groups, which begins today at Sunway College in Subang Jaya.

Malaysian Chess Federation president Datuk Sabbaruddin Chik will launch the month-long CAS chess festival at 10am today.

The two-day event this weekend is actually only the first half of the Royal Selangor juniors open tournament. The second half of this tournament, which caters for the under-12, under-16 and under-20 age categories, is scheduled for May 16 and 17 at the same venue.

Next week, from May 9 to 11, an inter-team tournament for institutions of higher learning in the Klang Valley will be organised, and on May 30 and 31, the Sakura Selangor junior girls tournament will be held. Both events will be held at Sunway College.

If these events seem to convey the impression that the CAS is giving a lot of emphasis to youth, rest assured that the association has also planned several tournaments for the adult chess players in the community.

For starters, there will be a silver jubilee allegro tournament this Sunday, and on May 23 and 24, the CAS silver jubilee blitz tournament will be held. The venue for both these events is yet to be finalised. Those interested can contact CAS secretary Jackie Wong (03-703 8237) or Lim Tse Pin (03-733 0927).

The expected highlight of the month-long chess festival is, of course, the Royal Selangor silver jubilee open chess tournament. This tournament, a nine-round Swiss event, is scheduled to start from May 27 to 31 at Sunway College.

There will be 20 cash prizes, including a first prize of RM1,500, a second prize of RM1,000 and a third prize of RM700.

The minor prizes range from RM500 for the fourth-placed winner to RM60 each for those who finish 11th to 20th in the tournament. Trophies will also be given to the top three winners.

In addition, there are cash prizes of RM50 each for the best woman and the best under-16 players if they score at least 50% in the tournament.

Those who do not qualify for any of the cash prizes will be eligible to take part in five lucky draws at the closing ceremony.

Entry fees for the Royal Selangor silver jubilee open tournament are RM35 for CAS members, RM50 for members of clubs that are affiliated to the CAS, and RM60 for other players.

International masters and visually-handicapped players are given free entry to this tournament.

The main partners who are making this silver jubilee chess festival possible for the CAS are Royal Selangor (which has been sponsoring chess events in Selangor for the past 16 years), Sakura Cafe And Cuisine (which sponsors the junior girls' tournament annually) and Sunway College (which is providing the venue for most of the events this month).

IIUM tournament results

RIGHT after the Asian cities team championship had ended at the Awana Genting Highland Golf And Country Resort last month, the International Islamic University Chess Club organised an open team tournament at Wenworth Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

This event was won by the Royal Selangor Club team which comprised Jimmy Liew, Wong Zi Jing, Ng Ee Vern and Mak Weng Yee.

Second was the Keramat Wangsa team in which Kamal Ariffin Wahiduddin, Hashim Jusoh, Mohd Zamri Mohd Sharif and Annuar Idhuan Yusoff played; and third in the tournament was the Muhibbah team which consisted of Agus Salim, Julian Navaratnam, Ismail Ahmad, Fikrul Saifuddin and Chay Joon Hong.

Also participating in this event was the Beirut team, comprising Ahmed Najjar, Antoine Kassis, Nassim Sakr, Maan Ftouni, Mouhamad Ben Archad and Elias Khairallah.

Initially, I had expected this team to be placed among the top three, but it failed to do so. The team eventually finished fifth in the standings.

The first inkling that the situation was not going well for the Beirut team was when I suddenly found Kassis and Ftouni back at the Awana late on the evening of May 17.

The previous day, MCF secretary Hamid Majid had arranged to send off the Beirut team but like a bad penny, the two Beirut players suddenly turned up at the Awana without any plans to return to Kuala Lumpur.

It seemed like a bad dream, but Hamid was forced to put them up for the night and made hasty arrangements to send them to Wenworth Hotel the next morning.

If Hamid and I had thought that this would be the end of the matter, imagine our surprise again when we saw Ftouni at the Awana on the morning of May 19, chatting to one of the Uzbekistan players!

Anyway, the six board prizes at the IIUM team tournament were awarded to Aziz Jaafar, Law Zhe Kang, Ng Ee Vern, Mak Weng Yee, Abdul Aziz Shoukor and Mohd Azizul Mat Daud.

The Best Junior prize was won by Wong Zi Jing, and the Best Woman prize went to Effalini Mohd Farid.

Amcorp blitz tournament

HERE are the results of the Amcorp Mall national blitz open chess tournament, organised jointly by the Malaysian Chess Federation and the Chess Association Of Selangor on April 12.

The winner of the knock-out event was China's Zhang Pengxiang who won RM500. Second was Zaw Win Lay of Myanmar, who won RM300.

The winners of the RM200 prizes were Wang Rui of China and Aung Myo Hlaing of Myanmar.

The Myanmar players dominated the field of 58 players when Myint Han and Naing Lim Aung both won RM100 each, while Maung Maung Lwin and Zaw Oo each took back RM50.

Local players Darren Yong and Law Zhe Kang were the other winners of RM100 each.