Tale of two players

This year-end may be a fitting time to pay some tribute to two chess players who have placed Asia on the world chess map. It’s fitting that they should be the representatives from two of the oldest civilisations in the world, China and India.

The two players are the current holders of the men's and women's world chess championship crowns: India's Viswanathan Anand and China's Hou Yifan.

Hou's exploits on the chess board are still fresh in our minds. Only last month, she had defended her world champion’s title successfully against Humpy Koneru who was rated so much higher than her. And incidentally, Koneru is also from India. 

Moreover just three days ago, Hou had helped the China team to win the women's world team chess championship in Turkey.

Hou is the dominant woman chess player in the world today and her rivals have good reason to be afraid of her. After all, can you imagine that a girl who is not quite 18 years old can already have so much experience on the chess board and is presently the women's world champion? There are still countless years for her to improve further. I would reckon that she will continue to have a good grip on the title for a long time to come.

But unlike Hou, Anand is already 42 years old. He is at an age where he is finding it increasingly challenging to play against other top chess grandmasters in the world.

The past four months especially have been a very trying period for Anand. All of a sudden he has found his form dipping. No longer is his game as feared as before. For a world chess champion, he has discovered to his dismay that it is getting harder to win.

It all started in September with the Chess Grand Slam Masters Final tournament. This six-player top-scale event was arranged as a double round-robin tournament with the first leg in Sao Paolo, Brazil and the second leg in Bilbao, Spain. The event had featured some of the best grandmasters in the world – players like Magnus Carlson, Lev Aronian, Hikaru Nakamura and Vasily Ivanchuk.

Anand finished the event with a 50 percent score. In the process, six draws peppered his results. He also lost two games which he made up with two wins against the tail-ender. A world champion scoring 50 percent in tournament play isn’t quite inspiring.

Anand’s woes continued after a break of about a month. At the sixth Tal memorial tournament in Moscow in November, he achieved the dubious distinction of drawing all his games. 

Till today, the former late world champion Mikhail Tal is admired foremost for his attacking style of play. Some say Tal’s style was reckless and unsound. Maybe it is true. However, his play did create the imbalance in his games and Tal thrived on the knife’s edge. 

However in this tournament, the players did not do much justice to the memory of the man that they had come to celebrate. An astounding 77.8 percent of the games – or 35 games out of the 45 played – were drawn. Anand’s own nine games was a significant contribution to this statistic. 

Finally in December, there was the London Chess Classic. Again, Anand’s result was lack lustre. It was his third 50 percent result in a top-notch tournament. He drew six of the eight games, lost one and won one.

All these indifferent results suggested that Anand the world champion was slipping down the top rankings. 

Long before these three events, he had already been displaced by Carlsen as the number one ranked player in the world. Now after these three events, he is down to number four in the world ranking list. Even Aronian and Kramnik have climbed above him.

More alarmingly, Anand’s rating has suffered in the process. When the World Chess Federation comes out with their January 2012 rating list this weekend, Anand’s rating will fall below the 2800-point level again. The last time he was below this level was in the May 2010 rating list.

It may be interesting to speculate why Anand’s form has suffered so much in the past four months. Perhaps it is because he is holding back his chess strength. 

Next May in Moscow, he shall be due to defend his world chess champion’s title against Boris Gelfand. 

Anand claimed that he hasn’t started his preparations yet. He would do so, he said recently, after the New Year. But even if he hasn’t started on his new preparations, he has certainly started to stop revealing his old preparations and ideas.

It makes sense to hold back your discoveries and only reveal them when the proper time comes. The Grand Slam Masters Final in Sao Paolo/Bilbao, the Tal Memorial in Moscow and the London Chess Classic were not the proper time nor the proper place, not when the title defence is just five months away.

Some people tend to dismiss Gelfand as a serious challenger to Anand because of his lower profile but in my opinion, all these people do not know the real Boris Gelfand. He has the necessary experience to cause Anand pain if the Indian is not careful. In the early 1990s, Gelfand was already a top grandmaster from the old Soviet Union. After the turbulence of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, Gelfand eventually migrated to Israel which he now calls home.

 

Surprise meltdown

Across the South China Sea from the peninsula, the one big event that occupies the minds of the local chess players is the Sarawak open which is organised annually by the Sarawak Chess Association.

This year, the FIDE-rated event received an added boost when a small number of foreign participants decided to cross over to Kuching from the Penang heritage city open event that had finished two days earlier.

Thus, it was of interest this time to see a few players from India, the Philippines, Singapore, Germany and Japan in the largely Malaysian field.

The Indian international master, Lahiri Atanu, had looked set to run away with the first prize but instead, his form suffered from a late meltdown.

His misfortune started in the seventh round of the competition when he found himself at the losing end of his game with a Singaporean player, Andre Jerome Eng. From a position of strength – he was leading the rest of the field by half a point – two players had leapfrogged him as the new tournament leaders and suddenly, he was half a point behind them. 

At this stage of the tournament, there were only two rounds left to play: the eighth and the ninth rounds. For Lahiri, the eighth round would have to be a do-or-die effort. He would have to win this vital game if there was to be any chance of reclaiming his lead in the event. 

However his opponent, Wong Jianwen, had other ideas. Wong, who was as our first board junior player at the recent world youth under-16 Olympiad in Turkey, refused to buckle and continued to cause problems to the Indian international master in a delicate queen and pawn endgame. Wong had his chance when all of a sudden, Lahiri blundered into a checkmate in one move. 

If Lahiri’s loss in the seventh round came as a surprise to all the participants, his unexpected loss in the eighth round was equivalent to a shock. It was quite unreal for an experienced tournament leader to suffer two losses in consecutive rounds. 

Although the main beneficiary of Lahiri’s bad luck was Eng, there were now seven other players who had climbed above the Indian in the standings with only one final round to play. 

Definitely, Lahiri was out of contention not only for the first and second prizes but perhaps the third and fourth prizes too. The event was wide open and anyone from among the top eight players could now win it.

Eng decided to play it safe and he took a draw with Wong in the final round. In other key games that finished soon afterwards, Benjamin Foo, another player from Singapore, beat Thomas Bueder from Germany while Kamaluddin Yusof had an inspired game to overcome Efren Bagamasbad from the Philippines.

These results meant that Eng and Foo would finish with equal points at the top of the standings. However, there was another surprise in the tournament as the tie-break system awarded the first prize to Foo and the second prize to Eng. Wong was third and Kamaluddin fourth. Lahiri won his ninth round game to take the fifth prize. 

I should also be mentioning here that over the last three months, the Persatuan Catur Negeri Kelantan had successfully organised its first Fide-rated tournament. 

Twelve players participated in this round-robin event which was won by Abdul Haq Mohamed with Nik Ahmad Farouqi finishing second. 

What I liked about their format was that the organisers managed to hold the games over two venues in Kuala Lumpur and Kelantan. Mainly, this was meant to overcome the logistics of getting enough Fide-rated players to play in Kelantan. 

   

Up next

National junior

The fourth national junior chess championships for boys and girls are now taking place at the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre in the Wilayah Complex, Jalan Munshi Abdullah, Kuala Lumpur. The event started on Monday and today is actually the final day of competition. Altogether, there are 54 boys and 22 girls playing in the two events.

 

Disputes and decisions

Getting appointed to an Appeals Committee at a big chess tournament may seem like an important recognition for a chess player but in reality, it is a thankless job. You may think, “wow, I'm being recognised by my peers” but really, it is not that big a deal.

Why? Because in the first instance, you are put on call for the whole duration of the tournament. It is well and good if there are no disputes to handle but when there is one, you will be called back to attend to the problem. So you have to let the organisers know where to find you.

Secondly, it eats into your time whenever there is an appeal. Your time becomes the organiser's time. Just as you want some peace and quiet between rounds or have your meal, you have to postpone all that to sit in the committee and hear out some other chess players' problems. 

Thirdly, being asked to judge your peers can be uncomfortable for many people. It's just like a people's court: a group of people having to come together to decide on the fate of their neighbours. One has to win the appeal and one has to lose it. Although the decision is collective, many people still don't feel good about it. 

Fourthly, there is always a danger that the committee may decide wrongly. 

Thankfully, disputes seldom occur in chess tournaments. Not that they don't happen but chances are very good that the chief arbiters are able to decide upon the matters firmly and the Appeals Committee are never called upon to meet at all. 

And if the tournament regulations require the appealing party to put up an appeal fee – which can be quite substantial to prevent players from making frivolous appeals – this will reduce even more any idea of filing the appeal. 

Just last week, I had the occasion to see the working of an appeals committee to consider the appeal from one young chess player in the challengers section of the Penang heritage open chess tournament. 

I won't go into the nitty gritty details of the appeal but what happened was that in a winning position, the player had blurted out the word “draw” to his opponent. Of course, his opponent accepted the offer. 

The chief arbiter was then called to intervene, he listened to both young players and decided that the draw should stand. Both players wrote “½-½” on their score sheets and signed them. Everyone thought that would be the end of the matter.

But a short while later, a notice of appeal was submitted by the winning player's parent who asked for the decision of the chief arbiter to be reviewed and that the game should continue. So the Appeals Committee was called in.

I chose to watch the proceedings from afar. As a visitor to the tournament, I was not even a parent to any of the players. Certainly, I wasn't going to mess about even as an observer. It wouldn't be fair to the tournament organisers.

So I simply watched from the back of the tournament hall. A lot of discussions went on, a lot of animated arm-waving and ultimately a decision was reached. Somehow to my surprise, the Appeals Committee had overturned the decision of the chief arbiter and allowed the game to continue from where the players left off.

Yes, sometimes it does happen that the chief arbiter's decision is overturned but it is rare. More often than not, the arbiter's decision would stand. And in this particular case, I thought that the arbiter's decision was rock-solid correct and should indeed stand. Hence, my little surprise.

More than that, while the Appeals Committee was meeting, the two affected players had in all probability analysed the position with their friends and coaches, and come to a conclusion how to play out the win. Asking the players to continue with the game would be, in my opinion, grossly unfair to the losing player.

Ah, but who am I as an outsider to tell the Appeals Committee that they were wrong, right? Therefore, I kept my elegant silence.

The game continued from where the two players left off under the watchful eyes of not one but several arbiters, plus many curious spectators, the parents among them, and true enough, the winning position quickly became a won position. All that was left was the mopping up exercise. A satisfied parent on the one hand and a dissatisfied parent on the other hand. But what to do? That was the decision of the Appeals Committee.

As a postscript to this story, I noticed that in subsequent rounds, this young player had scrawled across the top of his own score sheets a short warning to himself that he should “not say the word Draw if you are winning!” Obviously, he himself had learnt the lesson. There would not be another second chance.

By the way, I should also mention that Filipino international master Oliver Dimakiling successfully defended his Penang heritage open title. He had also won the tournament last year. 

Second was another Filipino player, Edgar Reggie Olay, while third and fourth were Vietnamese international master Nguyen Van Huy and Indian international master Atanu Lahiri.

The best Malaysian players were Yeoh Li Tian and Tan Khai Boon who were among the players in joint fourth positions. Altogether there were seven international masters and three Fide masters in the 73-player open event.

The challengers event attracted an unprecedented 135 players, including a sizable contingent of young players from Singapore. 

The winner here was Malaysia's Geeneish Sivalingam who edged out Ethan Soh of Singapore. Teh De Juan finished joint third in the standings together with Mohd Faizal Roslan, Tin Ruiqi and Marcus Chee.

Up next

Perak closed

The Perak International Chess Association (PICA) and the Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Seri Putera will jointly organise the Perak close chess tournament at the Dewan SMK Seri Putera in Jalan Sri Kepayang, Ipoh tomorrow and on Sunday. Only players who reside, work or born in Perak are permitted to participate in this two-day event. Nine rounds, 30-minute time control.

Entry fees: RM15 (PICA members, players below 16-years-old), RM20 (others). For more information, contact Yunus (013.3908129).

National junior

The Malaysian Chess Federation will hold the fourth national junior chess championship for boys and girls at the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre in the Wilayah Complex, Jalan Munshi Abdullah, Kuala Lumpur on Dec 19 to 23. Nine rounds, time control of 90 minutes with 30-second increment each move. Entry fees: RM60 (Fide-rated) and RM100 (unrated).

The winners of the boys' and girls' tournaments will be awarded the National Junior Master title. The results of these events will be a main criteria used for selection of players for international events next year. For more information, contact Gregory Lau (012.2577123, msianchess2010@gmail.com), Zuraihah Wazir (017.2837808) or Haslindah Ruslan (019.2069605). 

 

Chess etiquette

I wanted to call this week’s story The Art of Resigning but then I realised that the resignation process in a chess game is just a part of chess etiquette.

So what is chess etiquette? More than anything else, it means how to behave at the chess board, especially when you are taking part in a competition. Chess etiquette does not mean much when you are playing a social game with your chess friends but when it comes to competitions, be it a local event or an international-level tournament, misbehaviour just reflects badly on the offending chess player.

Let me bring up just this very simple example: the start of a game during a chess competition. It is good manners when both players shake hands before the first move of every game is played. After all, it is common courtesy that the players acknowledge the very existence of their opponents before the start of the game.

If you want to go one step further, you may even want to wait until your opponent finishes filling in the initial details on his score sheet before you start the game. Of course, this is assuming that you are playing in a local tournament where it is left to the players to start their chess clocks. In international events though, this is not possible at all as the arbiters will insist that all the games in each round start together and at the same time.

What else can be considered as chess etiquette? Recently, I was told by a friend that he became quite irritated once when his opponent suddenly picked up a piece from the chess board.

Now, the chess laws dictate that a piece once touched must be moved or captured, if it can be moved or captured. This offending player realised that he must move that piece but where should he move it to?

Normally, any player would just place the piece back on the board and consider his move. But not this fellow. What he did was to start chewing on the head of the piece as he thought and thought. Any player would be upset if his opponent would suddenly do that. I know that I would be. Now, that's bad chess etiquette.

Many years ago, I came across a player that brought a novel to the playing hall. It wasn't that he was reading his book between rounds when the pairings were being prepared; no, he would read the book during the game itself.

That act by itself showed a complete disrespect for his opponents. Initially, nobody complained because everyone could see that it was just a story book and not a chess book. But unfortunately, he kept winning game after game, and people were starting to get uncomfortable. Right after the lunch break, the arbiter put a stop to it and told him to put the book away. Whatever you do, you must show respect to your opponent no matter how good you think you are.

So now, back to my original peeve which is the art of resigning a chess game. When would you actually resign a lost game? 

Do you resign when your opponent is carrying out a decisive attack on your position and is having a big advantage in the game and you know that he wouldn't blunder his way out of winning it? Would you give up when you are down by one piece, two pieces or more, and you are certain that you are going to lose? Or would you play till the bitter end and await your opponent to bring down the axe with the checkmate?

It brings to mind the difference between a sadist and a masochist. The sadist of a chess player would love to make his opponent squirm and suffer long in the game while the masochist chess player would love to suffer through his own misfortune. Which one are you?

Anyway, I was placed in an unfortunate position last weekend when I was playing in the Penang Chess League – one of the very rare occasions that I can get to play in a local chess competition. There I was, seated across from this young player who refused to resign the game even though I had two rooks and a king, while he had only his king left on the board. A simple technical checkmate that any beginner would know. But we played on almost till the end. Admittedly, I was pretty irritated.

But I know that it may not be the kid that was totally at fault. The young chess players nowadays would have learnt their chess from parents or the local chess coaches. I would suppose that the coaches would also have taught their young charges how not to give up the struggle early and how the game is not won until the opponent gives up. 

To play till the end of a game shows good fighting spirit. That's a "never say die" attitude. But for goodness' sake, teach the kids that they must also respect their opponents. The senior players are not novices in the game; they are not the kids' fellow school mates with whom their chess games would be played till checkmate. They don't realise it so they must be taught how to resign their games properly. And that’s where the parents and coaches must come in to teach them to adopt the good habits and discard the bad. That's what good chess etiquette is about.

There are more that I can say about this subject matter but I think that I shall have to leave that to another time. In the mean time, happy playing!  

Up next

Penang heritage open

The Penang heritage city open chess championship started on Tuesday and will conclude tomorrow. There are two separate events: the open and challenger sections, and both are internationally rated. Nine rounds are being played with a time control of 90 minutes plus a 30-second increment per move.

If you hurry down to the Tanjung Bungah Beach Hotel, you will still be able to watch the final three rounds of the competition. Round seven is at nine o'clock this morning while the eighth round begins at 3p.m. Tomorrow, the final round will start at 9a.m.

Sarawak open

The five-day Sarawak open chess tournament kicks off from Monday at the Ultimate Professional Centre, opposite the Pullman Hotel, in Jalan Bukit Mata Kuching, Kuching.  This is an internationally-rated event played over nine rounds, 90 minutes plus a 30-second increment for each move.

Entry fees: Free for grandmasters and international masters (men and women), RM25 (ladies and all players below 16 years old) and RM50 (all other participants). Details available from Morsin Ahmad (012.8949415, morsinab@sarawaknet.gov.my), Abang Mohd Reduan (019.8887786, reduan_sahari@bsn.com.my) and Lim Kian Hwa (016.8603180, limkhwa@gmail.com). 

Perak closed

The Perak International Chess Association (PICA) and the Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Seri Putera will jointly organise the Perak close chess tournament at the Dewan SMK Seri Putera in Jalan Sri Kepayang, Ipoh on Dec 17 and 18. Only players who reside, work or born in Perak are permitted to participate. Nine rounds, 30-minute time control.

Entry fees: RM15 (PICA members, players below 16-years-old), RM20 (others). Closing date is Dec 14. For more information, contact Yunus (013.3908129).

 

Hou retains title

WELL DONE!

The picture shows our woman Fide master Nur Najiha bt Azman Hashim (left) and international master Lim Yee Weng proudly showing off their bronze medals that they won in the mixed pair chess competition at the recent SEA Games in Indonesia. 

These were the only medals won by the Malaysian contingent at the biennial games and they came at the expense of the Indonesian mixed pair, only because the regulations favoured determining results by match points instead of game points. 

The Malaysian pair had lost badly to Vietnam and the Philippines, gold and silver winners respectively, but had chalked up good victories against Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand, thus collecting six match points.

By comparison, the Indonesian mixed team had beaten Myanmar and Thailand, drawn with Vietnam and lost to the Philippines and Malaysia, to give them only five match points.

If game points had instead been used in this competition, the situation would have been reversed and the Indonesia team would have ended up ahead of Malaysia. So for once, the regulations were in our favour. My congratulations to the two bronze medallists. 

HOU RETAINS CROWN

At the end, it was a Humpy Koneru collapse of form that effectively ended her challenge in the women’s world chess championship match in Tirana, Albania.

When I was writing last week’s column, Humpy had just fallen behind by two games, having lost the third game and then the sixth game. 

And then, before I could even steel myself for her comeback in this match, the Indian grandmaster lost the seventh game as well. At the end of the game, she admitted that she was suffering from a loss of form.

But to my mind, it was more than a loss of form that did her in. Her nerves failed her as well. Humpy got herself into severe time pressure and she couldn’t cope with it. She made some pretty weak moves at critical stages in her games and her opponent, the defending women’s world champion, 17-year-old Hou Yifan  (pictured), punished her with some powerful play.

According to Hou, her opponent could have been under some great psychological pressure to perform too, especially since the Chinese grandmaster was already leading in the match.

The moment that Hou won the seventh game, Humpy knew that the end was near. Theoretically, she could still tie the match but it would mean having to win the last three games in a row. Practically, it was an impossible task and she knew it.

So in the eighth game, as soon as it became clear that there was no advantage to gain in the position, Humpy agreed to draw it. And with it, Hou had defended her women’s crown successfully.

Up next

Penang chess league

Teams participating in this weekend’s Penang Chess League are reminded of the change in venue to the SJKC Kheng Tean in Van Praagh Road, Penang. The two-day event is open to teams from four broad categories: public sector, factories, institutions of learning and others. 

Each team shall comprise four players and an optional reserve. Average rating per team during play should not be more than 2100 points. Seven rounds, time control of one hour play-to-finish for each game. Entry fees are RM150 (open category), RM90 (under-18 teams), RM60 (under-12 teams).  

More details available from Tan Eng Seong (012.4299517, estan64@yahoo.com or estan64@gmail.com) or visit http://penangchess.com for more information.

Penang heritage open

The Penang heritage city open chess championship kicks off on Tuesday at the Tanjung Bungah Beach Hotel, Penang on Dec 6-10. There are two separate events: the open and challenger sections, and both are internationally rated. There will be nine rounds played with a time control of 90 minutes plus a 30-second increment per move.

Entry fees for the open event: free for Malaysian national masters and all players with FIDE ratings of above 2300 points, RM100 (PCA members) and RM150 (non-members) for players with FIDE ratings between 2000 and 2299 points, RM150 (members) and RM200 (non-members) for players with FIDE ratings between 1800 and 1999 points, RM200 (members) and RM300 (non-members) for players with FIDE ratings between 1600 and 1799 points, and RM250 (members) and RM350 (non-members) for players without any FIDE rating.

Entry fees for the challenger event: RM50 (PCA members) and RM100 (non-members) for players with a FIDE rating, and RM100 (members) and RM150 (non-members) for unrated players. 

Although the closing date was yesterday, the organisers, the Penang Chess Association, will still accept late entries but the participants are charged double. Direct all inquiries to Tan Eng Seong (012.4299517, estan64@yahoo.com or estan64@gmail.com). More information also at http://penangchess.com

Sarawak open

The Sarawak Chess Association will hold the Sarawak open chess tournament at the Ultimate Professional Centre, opposite the Pullman Hotel, in Jalan Bukit Mata Kuching, Kuching on Dec 12-16. Internationally-rated event played over nine rounds, 90 minutes plus a 30-second increment for each move.

Entry fees: Free for grandmasters and international masters (men and women), RM25 (ladies and all players below 16 years old) and RM50 (all other participants). The closing date for entries is Dec 5.

Details available from Morsin Ahmad (012.8949415, morsinab@sarawaknet.gov.my), Abang Mohd Reduan (019.8887786, reduan_sahari@bsn.com.my) and Lim Kian Hwa (016.8603180, limkhwa@gmail.com).