Keeping the tempo

Don’t let the name Chesskidz fool you in any way. This five-player team of four Filipinos and one Ukrainian which powered their way to win this year’s ASTRO Merdeka team rapid open chess championship in Kuala Lumpur comprised very experienced players that included three grandmasters in their line-up. 

Just like the Chinese had dominated the Arthur Tan Malaysia open championship days earlier, the Filipinos showed their indepth strength at the Merdeka team rapid open championship. 

In second place was the PNOY Expats (four Filipino players with one grandmaster in the team) and third went to Chesskidz Shock Troopers (four Filipino players and a lone Malaysian). 

The best all-Malaysian effort went to the team Formidable that comprised three past and present national champions in Marcus Chan, Nicholas Chan and Lim Zhuo Ren, with Yeap Eng Chiam propping up the rear.

After the excitement of the Malaysian Chess Festival, the focus of the chess community here has turned to the Raja Nazrin Shah invitational masters and international open chess championships at the Swiss Garden Hotel & Residences in Kuala Lumpur. 

These two tournaments started on Monday but are now towards their tail-ends. There are only three more rounds to be played before conclusion. Today sees the morning seventh round starting at nine o’clock and the afternoon eighth round beginning at three o’clock, while the ninth (and final) round will be played tomorrow morning.  

The first event was the Raja Nazrin Shah invitational masters tournament in which the organizers had invited 10 players to the round-robin tournament. Originally, the Filipino grandmaster, Joseph Sanchez, was supposed to play in the invitational but at the technical meeting on Sunday, he agreed to make way for the young Indian international master, Das Arghyadip, who was in search of his final grandmaster title norm.

Sanchez thus found himself competing with 65 other players in the Raja Nazrin Shah international open tournament instead. 

But before I say anything more about the open event, I must mention that the round-robin invitational tournament boasts a rather interesting mix of players. Apart from Arghyadip, the other nine players include grandmasters Nguyen Anh Dung of Vietnam and Singapore’s Dr Wong Meng Kong. Then there are the father-and-son duo of grandmaster Tahir Vakhidov and international master Jahongir Vakhidov from Uzbekistan. The remaining players are all international masters: Richard Bitoon and Oliver Barbosa who are both from the Philippines, Nguyen Van Huy from Vietnam, Goh Wei Ming from Singapore and of course, our own Mas Hafizulhelmi.

As for the open tournament, the number of participants eventually settled at 66. I was told by the tournament director, Peter Long, that he was quite relieved with this number as earlier, he kept getting enquiries from grandmasters and the number of participants had threatened to spill out of control. 

As he was organizing only one open event, he would prefer to keep the tournament at a manageable number and not turn it top heavy. He reasoned that too many grandmasters playing in the tournament could crowd out the lower-ranked local players whom he was encouraging to take part. 

Perhaps he has a point there because this open tournament had attracted 16 local participants that included both our current national champion Lim Zhuo Ren and current national women’s champion Nur Nabila Azman Hisham. That’s almost 25 percent of the field.

Nevertheless, a 66-player field that can boast of enough depth in three grandmasters (Sanchez, Susanto Megaranto and Cerdas Barus), 12 international masters, two woman grandmasters and two woman international masters cannot be that bad, can it?

(Incidentally, Megaranto had made his way to Kuala Lumpur directly from Khanty- Mansiysk in Russia where he had been playing in the Chess World Cup. Maybe he had expected to be eliminated in the very first round because he is here with us today in the thick of the Raja Nazrin Shah international open tournament!) 

 

The two events are organized by the Kuala Lumpur Chess Association with sponsorship from the Masterskill Education Group Berhad under its Educating Malaysia Corporate Social Responsibility programme. 

Up next

Chess world cup

Again, this is just a short note to say that the Chess World Cup is continuing in the Russian city of Khanty-Mansiysk. This is a grueling knock-out event that started with 128 participants 13 days ago and the field has already been whittled down to eight survivors. The fifth round starts today. 

The stakes are pretty high as the top three winners of the event will qualify to join the Candidates tournament of the next world chess championship cycle. The final of this Chess World Cup will be played from next Friday until Tuesday at the latest if tie-break games are needed.  

You can watch live games from the official website at http://chess.ugrasport.com/ Check it out for the schedule of play.