All set for chess fest

Today is the eve of the Malaysia Chess Festival and tomorrow, the first of six main events – the Merdeka individual rapid open tournament – will kick off the 11-day chess festival at the ballroom of the Cititel Hotel at the MidValley shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur. 

Elsewhere on this page is a summary of the various events that everybody can look forward to. Take your choice: there is something for everyone, be it a simultaneous chess game, a five-minute blitz tournament, a 30-minute rapid chess tournament or a full 90-minute normal time regulation tournament.  

Concerns that I voiced last week about the Malaysia Chess Festival taking a possible beating from a major rival tournament being planned at the same time in nearby Manila looks to have eased.

The whole of this week as I continuously checked with the organizers, their confidence seemed to have returned to normal levels. To paraphrase a song by Harvey Schmidt in the mid-1960s, their “cup runneth over”. The organizers are brimming with joy that the response to the Festival has exceeded last year’s.

For example, tomorrow’s one-day event has attracted at least 74 players. This was the number told to me three days ago and no doubt, as more chess players arrive in Kuala Lumpur, the number of participants is set to go up further. 

Similarly too, there are at least 67 teams in the Merdeka team rapid open with foreign grandmasters from Australia, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Germany and India joining in the fray with local players. 

But the real icing on the cake is the increased entries for the main event, the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open, that will start on Sep 1. Last year, the field consisted of exactly 100 players. Until Tuesday, 135 players had already registered for this year’s edition. 

For a long time, the organizers had been overly cautious about disclosing publicly the list of participants for fear that the foreign entries could be persuaded to withdraw and play elsewhere. Maybe the fear was unfounded but then, anything can happen in the world of chess today.

Nevertheless, today being the eve of the Malaysia Chess Festival where everything comes together, I can now safely whisper out loud that the grandmasters registered for the Malaysia open include: 

Abhijeet Gupta (India, rated 2587), Zhou Weiqi (China, 2570), Ziaur Rahman (Bangladesh, 2543), Cao Sang (Vietnam, 2540), Prasad Arun (India, 2535), David Smerdon (Australia, 2526), Dao Thien Hai (Vietnam, 2516), Wen Yang (China, 2507), R.R. Laxman (India, 2503), Xu Jun (China, 2503), Nguyen Anh Dung (Vietnam, 2500), Saidali Yuldachev (Uzbekistan, 2496), Jha Sriram (India, 2490), Xu Yuhua (China, 2488), Marat Dzhumaev (Uzbekistan, 2484), Gerhard Schebler (Germany, 2474) and Niaz Murshed (Bangladesh, 2406).

They may not be the top echelon of grandmasters in the world but hey, the Malaysia open was never about attracting the crème de la crème of grandmasters in the first place. Much as like water finding its own level, grandmasters and international masters will find the right level of tournaments to suit their own playing levels. 

Anyway, the Malaysia open will also feature two woman grandmasters from China and Vietnam, at least 18 international masters, several Fide masters and woman Fide masters. 

The Malaysian challenge will be spearheaded by international masters Mok Tze Meng and Jimmy Liew. 

There is a sizeable number of Malaysian entries and apart from Mok and Liew, we have no less than four national masters in the field too, namely, Lim Chuin Hoong, current national champion Tan Khai Boon, Edward Lee and Evan Timothy Capel. There will also be spotlight on Yeoh Li Tian. 

And I should also particularly mention the presence of two of our woman national masters, current women’s national champion Fong Mi Yen and Alia Anin Azwa Bakri, as among the competitors. They are being very good sports.

Up next  

Malaysia chess festival

Here is a summary of all the events at this year’s Malaysia Chess Festival. All games will be played at the Cititel Midvalley ballroom:

a)Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open: Fide-titled event, nine rounds, Sep 1-7, USD4,000 first prize, entry fees range from USD50 to USD200 depending on player’s rating;

b)AmBank Malaysia chess challenge: Fide-rated event but player’s rating not to exceed 2200 points, nine rounds, Sep 1-7, RM2,000 first prize, entry fees range from RM75 to RM150 depending on player’s rating, 20 percent discount for players below 16 years old;

c)Merdeka national age group rapid open: seven rounds, Sep 5, medals as prizes, RM25 entry fee;

d)Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng international seniors open: Fide-rated event, nine rounds, Sep 1-7, RM4,000 first prize, entry fees range from RM100 to RM400 depending on player’s rating;

e)ASTRO Merdeka individual rapid open: seven rounds, Aug 28, RM1,000 first prize, entry fees are RM30 (adults) and RM20 (under-16 players);

f)ASTRO Merdeka team rapid open: nine rounds, Aug 29-31, RM5,000 first prize, entry fees range from RM150 to RM375 depending on number of players in the team;

g)ASTRO simultaneous chess display: Sep 3, 10 grandmasters and international masters against 250 players below 16 years old, entry fee RM20 per player per ASTRO account;

h)Malaysia blitz open: details to be announced later, Sep 7.

More details from Hamid Majid (019.3158098, fax 03.40244337, aham@pc.jaring.my or aham4you@gmail.com).

UTP rapid chess

As part of Universiti Teknologi Petronas’ convocation programme this year, there will be a national rapid chess open tournament at the main hall of the university’s campus in Tronoh, Perak on Oct 9-10. The Malaysian Chess Federation and the Perak International Chess Association are the co-organisers with the University. Entry fees are RM35 for adults and players below 18 years old, RM30 for players below 16 years old and RM25 for players below 12 years old. More information available from Saeksarn Sinnaso (saeksarnskill@gmail.com) or Wan Fatin Izyan (eyanzdaqpe@gmail.com). 

 

Spanner in the works

There are just nine days to go before the start of this year’s Malaysia Chess Festival. Are you ready for it? A highlight of this year’s festival programme will be a second visit to our shores by the 12th world chess champion, Anatoly Karpov.

He won’t be playing in any of the tournaments at the festival. Rather, he will be here for only a few days in early September before jetting off elsewhere to continue with his worldwide campaign to become the next president of the World Chess Federation (Fide).

Nevertheless, spectators and participants alike at the Malaysia Chess Festival can expect to bump into the former world champion. If you need him to autograph any of his chess books, this will be an opportunity for you. Chess enthusiasts can also look forward to attend a special subscription-based Buka Puasa function with him on Sep 5.

When I was speaking to the organizers of the festival earlier this week, I was reminded that they were facing possibly the greatest and gravest challenges to their organizational capabilities in the last seven years. 

For the first time since the inception of the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open chess championship in 2004, the organizers are bracing themselves for a rival competition in nearby Philippines to pull away some of the entries.

Yes, there is also an international chess tournament that’s been planned in Manila at almost the same time. Normally, federations would work together to ensure that international tournaments would not overlap. 

It’s not difficult to understand why. If tournaments do not overlap, players – especially the professional chess players – would be easier to persuade to play in these events one after another. It maximizes their investment of time and money to fly into this region to play in the chess competitions, and all organizers are happy with the quality of players that they can attract.  

Not this time. The National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) has been promised USD100,000 by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the current Fide president, to hold a tournament in memory of his predecessor, Florencio Campomanes, who died earlier this year.

Now, with Campomanes being a Filipino and all that, there was no way that the NCFP was going to say no to holding this memorial event. But then for some reason, the dates chosen for their event were pushed from mid-August to the end of August. Naturally, this then overlapped substantially with the dates for the Malaysia Chess Festival. 

Some people say that it had been done with a purpose. It’s not that the NCFP is not aware that the Malaysia Chess Festival is an annual event. The festival is already in its seventh year and is well publicized around the world. In the past, Filipino chess players have always turned up to support both the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open and the Merdeka rapid chess team tournaments. 

But not this year. Word has been going around that the NCFP had advised their players in no uncertain terms that they should be playing in Manila instead of Kuala Lumpur. Worse still, there is unconfirmed news that the top Filipino players have been threatened with bans by their federation should they ignore this “advice”.

In all likelihood, the Filipino players will not be here. Certainly, those players who have already been selected by their federation for the Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk will not want to jeopardize their selection status. Those players not in the Filipino team can’t be bothered with the ban but they may be attracted to the larger prize moneys at the Campmanes memorial tournament in Manila.

All this is, of course, very sad because if Campomanes were alive today, the last thing he would want was for his memorial tournament to clash with the Malaysian Chess Festival. Campomanes has always been a very good and supportive friend of Malaysia. It was a friendship that started in 1974 and even until last year, he had been a regular visitor here.

But why, you may ask, is the NCFP risking to upset the other federations in the region? The answer may be simply that it all boils down to relationships and the charged atmosphere that’s presently enveloping chess, an atmosphere created by the Fide election campaign. 

In the world of chess, there is a close bond between Fide and the NCFP. It had all started with Campomanes’ own election as Fide president in 1982. The bond remained after Ilyumzhinov took over the Fide reins. Even Campo’s death has not changed this relationship.

It is publicly known that the NCFP is supporting the Ilyumzhinov ticket at the Fide elections next month while Malaysia’s stand has been to side with Karpov. There are claims by Karpov’s team that the Ilyumzhinov team has been going around the world to promise great rewards to national federations that support them.

Whether or not this claim can be substantiated is not for me to say but in the absence of any other explanation, any observer will be guessing that if this claim is true, then there’s every reason for the NCFP to want their Campomanes memorial tournament to succeed at the expense of the Malaysian Chess Festival.  

Nevertheless, the organizers of the Malaysian Chess Festival are quite confident that the Manila event will have little impact on the success of our local festival. 

“We are still enjoying very good response from the foreign players. They know Malaysian hospitality well and they know that when they play here, they are among old friends. Friendship counts a lot among real friends,” said one of the organizers.

Up next  

Malaysia chess festival

Here is a summary of all the events at this year’s Malaysia Chess Festival. All games will be played at the Cititel Midvalley ballroom:

a)Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open: Fide-titled event, nine rounds, Sep 1-13, USD4,000 first prize, entry fees range from USD50 to USD200 depending on player’s rating;

b)AmBank Malaysia chess challenge: Fide-rated event but player’s rating not to exceed 2200 points, nine rounds, Sep 1-13, RM2,000 first prize, entry fees range from RM75 to RM150 depending on player’s rating, 20 percent discount for players below 16 years old;

c)Merdeka national age group rapid open: seven rounds, Sep 5, medals as prizes, RM25 entry fee;

d)Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng international seniors open: Fide-rated event, nine rounds, Sep 1-13, RM4,000 first prize, entry fees range from RM100 to RM400 depending on player’s rating;

e)Merdeka individual rapid open: seven rounds, Aug 28, RM1,000 first prize, entry fees are RM30 (adults) and RM20 (under-16 players);

f)Astro Merdeka team rapid open: nine rounds, Aug 29-31, RM5,000 first prize, entry fees range from RM150 to RM375 depending on number of players in the team;

More details from Hamid Majid (019.3158098, fax 03.40244337, aham@pc.jaring.my or aham4you@gmail.com).

Penang rapid chess

The Penang Chess Association (PCA) is holding a rapid chess tournament on Aug 22 as a warm-up event for players before they participate in the Malaysia Chess Festival. Entry fees are RM10 for  PCA members and RM25 for non-members. To register, contact Tan Eng Seong (012-4299517 after 7pm, estan64@streamyx.com or estan64@gmail.com). Entries close on Aug 20.

UTP rapid chess

As part of Universiti Teknologi Petronas’ convocation programme this year, there will be a national rapid chess open tournament at the main hall of the university’s campus in Tronoh, Perak on Oct 9-10. The Malaysian Chess Federation and the Perak International Chess Association are the co-organisers with the University. Entry fees are RM35 for adults and players below 18 years old, RM30 for players below 16 years old and RM25 for players below 12 years old. More information available from Saeksarn Sinnaso (saeksarnskill@gmail.com) or Wan Fatin Izyan (eyanzdaqpe@gmail.com). 

 

Clash of the titans

Who do you think will win if a match were to be played today between Russia and China? Russia is, of course, the traditional chess power house of the world while China is the top chess-playing country in Asia.

If the top 10 players in each country are taken as the basis of comparison, the Russian men leads their Chinese counterparts by 89 rating points today. And if a comparison is made of their women chess players, the difference is even smaller: a mere 11 points separate the 10 best players from both sides.

Therefore, a match between these two chess super-powers would make a very good reason to determine which country is superior.

And actually, there is such a match going on today. It is the seventh such encounter between the two countries but it did not start out as an annual match because after the first one was played in Shanghai in 2001, there was a three-year gap before the second match was organized in Moscow in 2004.

After that, the chess federations of the two countries thought it best to have an annual match and so, Argun in Russia was the host in 2006, followed by the fourth match in Nizhni Novgorod in 2007, Ningbo in China in 2008, and last year’s match in Sochi, Russia.

This year’s match is taking place today in Yinzhou, Ninbo in China, having started on Aug 4 and will end this Sunday. Each side is fielding five men’s players and five women’s players.

The match comprises a Scheveningen style of team event where the members of each team will play the members of the opposing team once at normal time controls, followed by rapidchess games and finally, a series of blitz games. Of course, to ensure an even playing field, the men are competing among themselves only and likewise, the women are playing among themselves too.

In the first round, the China men’s team won with a 3-2 score but the Russian women won 3½-1½. In the second round, the Russian men were almost whitewashed when China won by 4½-½. However, the women’s teams fought to a 2½-2½ draw. In the third round, Russia and China tied at 2½-2½ in both the men’s and women’s contests.

The fourth round saw the men drawing on all the boards while the Russian women edged out their Chinese opponents by a 3-2 margin. In the fifth, both the Chinese men’s and women’s sides won by 3-2. 

The final score at the end of the normal time control games on Tuesday was 27 points to the China team and 23 points to Russia. 

The Chinese men’s team could take credit that they did not lose any of the rounds. At their worst, they drew the third round but at their best, they almost totally blanked out the Russian men in the second round.

Here are two Wang Hao games from the match. Wang Hao is the current national champion of China. He is also a previous winner of the Malaysia open chess tournament in 2005. The first game below was from the fifth round while the other one was played in the fourth round.

White: Vladimir Potkin (Russia)

Black: Wang Hao (Chinese) 

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 0-0 5.Bd3 d5 6.Nf3 c5 7.0-0 Nc6 8.a3 Bxc3 9.bxc3 Qc7 10.Bb2 Na5 11.cxd5 exd5 12.Ne5 Re8 13.a4 Rxe5 (A rather inspired exchange sacrifice. In exchange for the rook, Black gets a dominating knight into the game.) 14.dxe5 Qxe5 15.h3 c4 (This fixes White’s black-squared bishop and after which, Black can look to exchanging off White’s other bishop.) 16.Bc2 Bf5 17.Re1 Bxc2 18.Qxc2 Nb3 19.Rad1 Re8 20.f3 Nc5 21.Rd4 Nd3 22.Re2 (It was time to eliminate the black knight with 22.Rxd3.) 22...Nh5 23.e4 (23.Rxd3 is too late because of 23...cxd3 24.Qxd3 Nf4.) 23...Nhf4 24.Rd2 f5 25.Ba3 fxe4 26.fxe4 Qg5 27.Kh2 Rxe4 28.Qd1 Qe5 29.Rxe4 dxe4 30.Qg4 h5 0-1

White: Wang Hao (China) 

Black: Sergei Rublevsky (Russia) 

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 Qc7 7.0-0 Nf6 8.Be3 Be7 9.f4 d6 10.a4 0-0 11.Kh1 Re8 12.Bf3 Rb8 13.Qd2 Na5 14.b3 b6 15.Rad1 Bb7 16.Nde2 Rbc8 17.Bf2 Nc6 18.g4 d5 19.e5 Ne4 20.Nxe4 dxe4 21.Bg2 Nb4 22.c3 Red8 23.Bd4 Nd5 24.Qc2 e3 25.Qd3 Bc5 26.c4 Bxd4 27.Qxd4 Nf6 28.Qxe3 Nxg4 29.Qg3 h5 30.Nd4 Bxg2+ 31.Kxg2 Qb7+ 32.Kg1 Rd7 33.h3 Nh6 34.Rd2 Rcd8 35.Rfd1 g6 36.Qe3 Kg7 37.Kf2 Qc7 38.Ke2 Kh7 39.Rd3 Qb7 40.Qf3 Qc7 41.Qc6 Rc8 42.Qxc7 Rdxc7 43.Nf3 Nf5 44.Ng5+ Kg8 45.Rd8+ Rxd8 46.Rxd8+ Kg7 47.Ne4 h4 48.Kd3 Rc6 49.b4 Rc7 50.Nf6 Rb7 51.Ra8 a5 52.b5 Ng3 53.Ne8+ Kh6 54.Nd6 Rc7 55.Rh8+ Kg7 56.Rb8 Rc5 57.Rxb6 g5 58.Rc6 g4 59.Ne4 gxh3 60.Nf2 Rxc6 61.bxc6 Nf5 62.Nxh3 Kf8 63.c7 Ne7 64.Kd4 (This was a mistake that threw away the full point. White should have played 64.c5 and 65.c6 to cut off Black’s king from the queenside.) 64...Ke8 65.Kc5 Kd7 66.Kb6 Kc8 67.Ng5 Nf5 68.Kxa5 Kxc7 69.Kb5 Nd4+ 70.Kb4 Kc6 71.a5 Ne2 72.Nh3 Nd4 73.c5 Kb7 74.Kc4 Nc6 75.Kb5 Nd4+ 76.Kc4 Nc6 77.Ng5 Nxa5+ 78.Kd3 Kc6 79.Ke4 Nb3 80.Kf3 Nxc5 81.Kg4 Nd3 82.Nh3 Kd5 83.Kxh4 ½-½ 

Up next  

Merdeka rapid events

Here is a reminder to all local chess players that the Merdeka individual rapid open tournament will be played on Aug 28, the Merdeka team rapid open tournament on Aug 29-31, and the Merdeka individual national age-group rapid open tournament will be on Sep 5. Venue for all three events is the Cititel hotel ballroom at the MidValley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur. 

For the individual rapid event, entry fees are RM20 for players below 16 years old and RM30 for others. For the team rapid event, entry fees are RM300 for four-player teams and RM375 for five-player teams. Junior teams (all players to be below 16 years old) will be charged at RM150 for four-player teams and RM175 for five-player teams. For the age-group event, the entry fee is RM25. More details from Hamid Majid (019.3158098, fax 03.40244337, aham@pc.jaring.my or aham4you@gmail.com).

 

Tough choice

Right after my column appeared with this picture last week, I received a short message from one of Malaysia’s international masters. 

By all accounts, it can be safely assumed that Wong Zijing is no longer actively playing in chess competions. As far as I can determine, he hasn’t been playing much at all since August 2006. In fact, even social chess may have taken a back seat with him as his last known attempt at a serious chess game must gave been at last year’s time-hallowed annual chess match between the teams of Cambridge and Oxford universities.

His friends and fellow chess players in the country may want to know that he is now a graduate student pursuing his Doctorate degree at the University of California Berkeley in the United States. He asked me to say “hi” to them. 

Before going over to the States, Wong was at University of Cambridge in England and before that, he was at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He is now doing research on a specialist area of science called metamaterials. Want to know what it is? Just look it up on the Internet.

Anyway, after taking a look at the picture in last week’s column, Wong dropped me a short note to say that it was about time that 12-year-old Yeoh Li Tian, pictured playing a blitz game with former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, decide whether he wanted to be like “Le Quang Liem” or “one of us”.

He didn’t mince his words. The “one of us” refers explicitly to himself and his chess peers, local players like Mas Hafizulhelmi, Lim Yee Weng, Marcus Chan, Nicholas Chan and Lim Chuin Hoong. 

The “Le Quang Liem” he mentioned happens to be Vietnam’s top chess player. Liem joined the world’s grandmaster club four years ago. Today, while only 19 years old but with an international rating of 2681 points, he is already knocking on the doors of that even more elite club of chess grandmasters who are rated at 2700 points or above. There are not many of them, certainly not more than 40 players currently in this category of super-grandmasters.

I knew fairly well what Wong was trying to say but his note made such a fascinating impression that I wanted to know slightly more from him. 

Well, he told me, everyone knows that to become a grandmaster like Liem, you need to be a professional chess player and the financial support to train abroad. Recently, the Vietnam Chess Federation came out to say that Liem would require an annual fund of USD100,000. Then there is the player’s own commitment and sacrifices, especially academic sacrifice. Is our society ready for that, he questioned.

“I have a good friend in China who told me that many of the Chinese grandmasters had quit school at the early stage of their lives to take up a professional career in chess. Many of them had not even completed their primary education. 

“Are our chess players prepared to make such personal sacrifices,” he continued. “My peers and I had to balance chess with our studies because at the end of the day, we have to think about our own livelihood and our direction in life.” 

Livelihood. Indeed, if we look at some of our national champions, I can say that they have ended up very well in life. Mas Hafizulhelmi is today a chemical engineer, both Lim Chuin Hoong and Nicholas Chan are medical doctors, Lim Yee Weng is a lawyer while Marcus Chan is an electronics engineer. Even Ooi Chern Ee, arguably our highest ranked player not to have become a national champion, is an actuarist. But to get where they are today, they recognize that they have had to sacrifice their chess.

According to Wong, only geniuses are able to continue with this fine balance in their lives, He believed that Gata Kamsky, a chess prodigy, was one of them. 

(Kamsky was born in the old Soviet Union in 1974 and his family emigrated to the United States in 1989. At 16 years old, he took his first steps towards the pinnacle of world chess and ultimately challenged Viswanathan Anand for the Professional Chess Association version of the chess crown in 1995. One year later, he challenged Anatoly Karpov for the World Chess Federation version of the chess title. After he lost both matches, he disappeared completely from the chess world for nine years to earn his law degree and then returned to top-level chess in 2004 with great success.)

Unless you are like Kamsky, Wong said, it is almost impossible to find that balance between chess and work. Where Li Tian is concerned, he suggested that the boy would have to make up his mind soon. 

No doubt, his one-month stint in Beijing last year and his present chess tutelage under Bangladeshi grandmaster Ziaur Rahman would help his chess grow in the short to medium term but he must either have the courage to make chess his profession or concentrate on his studies and eventually “be like one of us.” 

“It’s a tough decision, very tough indeed,” Wong acknowledged, “but there are no two ways about it.”

Up next  

Cerdik Catur

The Cerdik Catur chess challenge will be played at the Kompleks Belia dan Kebudayaan Negeri Selangor in Section 7, Shah Alam this Sunday. For Shah Alam residents, the entry fees are RM20 for adults and RM15 for under-18 players. Non-Shah Alam residents are required to pay RM5 more. For inquiries, contact Mohd Fadli Zakaria (014.2312370, seme_event@yahoo.com). 

Merdeka rapid events

The Merdeka individual rapid open tournament will be played on Aug 28, the Merdeka team rapid open tournament on Aug 29-31, and the Merdeka individual national age-group rapid open tournament will be on Sep 5. Venue for all three events is the Cititel hotel ballroom at the MidValley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur. Entries close on Aug 10 for the first two events and Aug 29 for the third event.

For the individual rapid event, entry fees are RM20 for players below 16 years old and RM30 for others. For the team rapid event, entry fees are RM300 for four-player teams and RM375 for five-player teams. Junior teams (all players to be below 16 years old) will be charged at RM150 for four-player teams and RM175 for five-player teams. For the age-group event, the entry fee is RM25. More details from Hamid Majid (019.3158098, fax 03.40244337, aham@pc.jaring.my or aham4you@gmail.com).