Great Response

It looks like record entries for the KL open chess tournament next month. According to the Kuala Lumpur Chess Association which is organizing this event, there were already more than 120 registrants from 21 countries when entries closed officially earlier this week.

“This is remarkable,” said Peter Long, the man behind the KL open. “In our first two events, we had only a handful of foreign grandmasters playing. We expected the same for this year but it seems that we have exceeded our expectations.”

There will be at least 15 grandmasters in the tournament, led by Georgia’s Mikheil Mchedlishvili who will be the highest rated participant with 2634 rating points. However, all eyes will be on China’s 16-year-old lass, Hou Yifan. 

Two years ago at the age of 14 years and six months, she became the youngest female chess player in history ever to qualify for the Grandmaster (GM) title. The GM title is not to be confused with the Woman Grandmaster (WGM) title that’s given only to woman players. The GM title is mostly awarded to men but once in a while, exceptionally gifted woman players also do qualify for this title. You may already be familiar with these women chess players who hold the GM title: Judit Polgar, Susan Polgar and Xie Jun, among some of them. Well, add Hou Yifan to this list too.

In 2007, Hou became China's youngest ever national women's champion and in 2008, she became the youngest-ever finalist for the women's world chess championship title. Before becoming a GM, she was a Woman FIDE Master (WFM) in 2004, WGM in 2007 and an International Master (IM) in 2008.

She’s a real chess prodigy and I’m excited that she’ll be here to play in a Malaysian tournament. Who knows, if her schedule is not too tight, I may get a chance to catch her for an interview.

There’s also three-time German chess champion Thomas Luther playing in the KL open as well as Bangladesh’s Ziaur Rahman who is staying here in Malaysia for about a year. Seasoned chess enthusiasts may remember the name of Cao Sang. Previously from Vietnam, he now lives in Hungary. He will be in Kuala Lumpur too.

Other GMs in the field will include Indonesia’s Susanto Megaranto, Uzbekistan’s Saidali Yuldashev who is quite a familiar face, Vietnam’s Bui Vinh and Nguyen Anh Dung, and Indonesia’s Barus Cerdas. And at the last count, there will also be about 24 IMs and 20 FMs in the field. 

There will also be about 20 Malaysians in the field and the local charge will be led by IM Mok Tze Meng. Our other local players will include Nicholas Chan, IM Jimmy Liew and Lim Chuin Hoong. Conspicuously absent, though, will be IM Mas Hafizulhelmi.

I should also mention here that English GM Nigel Short, the former finalist of the world chess championship in 1993, will be flying in towards the end of the KL open. No, he’s not playing in the tournament but he has agreed to detour here from Bangkok where he’s going to be at the Bangkok open.

It’s now confirmed that Short will be giving a simultaneous exhibition to a maximum of 20 players on Apr 10 at 4pm. Venue will be the Grand Olympic Hotel in Jalan Hang Jebat, Kuala Lumpur, which is also where the KL open will be played.

The main tournament itself will be held from Apr 6 to Apr 12. There will be a total of nine rounds and on the last day, a blitz tournament is planned for the afternoon before the closing ceremony. 

While entries have closed officially, it is still possible for people to still register themselves. However, their acceptance into the event is at the organizer’s discretion and on top of the normal entry fees, a 50% penalty will also apply.

For registration and more information, check the KLCA blog at http://klchess.blogspot.com or alternatively, contact Peter Long (013.3920920, peterlong@aol.asia)

Up next  

March rapid

The Excel Chess Academy will organize their March rapid chess tournament at their premises in Overseas Union Garden, Kuala Lumpur tomorrow and on Sunday. Entry fee is RM35 per player. To register, contact Jax Tham (013.3232280, jaxtham@hotmail.com).

KL rapid grand prix

The Kuala Lumpur Chess Association (KLCA) and Polgar Chess Asia will jointly organize the third leg of the KL rapid grand prix on Apr 3-4. Entry fees for the open section are RM15 for members of the KLCA and the Royal Selangor Club (RSC) and RM20 for non-members. For the under-12 section, the entry fees are RM5 for children of KLCA and RSC members and RM10 for others. Venue is the RSC’s Card Room at Dataran Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur. More details at  the KLCA website, (http://www.klchess.com/)

Klang Parade open

The Klang Parade and the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre will jointly organize this year’s Klang Parade chess tournament early next month. An age group event for under-12 and under-18 players will be held on Apr 3, while there will be an open event on Apr 4. Entry fees are RM10 for under-12 players and RM15 for all others. To register, contact Hamid Majid (019.3158098) or Siti Nor Faiza (03-33437889).

Perak grand prix

The second leg of the Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng Perak grand prix chess tournament, sponsored by Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad, will be played at the Chinese Recreation Club in Jalan Stesen, Taiping on Apr 11. Entry fees are RM25 for the open section, RM15 for under-16 players and RM10 for under-12 players. Members of the Perak International Chess Association (PICA) and players born in Perak pay RM5 less. Entries close on Apr 8. More information is available from http://perakchess.blogspot.com 

 

Toiletgate

I’m still surprised by the speed of the Internet. A fortnight ago, within hours of my article appearing in TheStar Online, I received an email from British grandmaster Nigel Short. 

He disagreed with the one-liner where I had mentioned him. So, we both agreed that I should produce his email this week to set the record straight and put this matter to rest. Here is GM Short’s message:

“Dear Quah,

”I strongly take issue with your comments in "The Star" that Garry Kasparov and myself "committed an unthinkable crime" by taking the World Championship outside Fide. The fact is that Florencio Campomanes abrogated our right to vote on the venue of World Championship. It was this illegal action, totally contrary to the Fide statutes, which prompted the split. If you wish to talk of "the chess crime of the century" then this was it.

”Your comments have damaged my reputation publicly in Malaysia. They are totally unfair and do not give even half the picture. I ask you to print a retraction immediately.

”Regards,

Nigel." 

Thank you, Nigel, for the clarification. Okay, with this out of the way, let us return to the world chess championship in Elista where the unification match had developed as many twists and turns as any journey up our hill resorts. 

I thought Vladimir Kramnik would be able to coast home with his two-point lead over Veselin Topalov but I was wrong. Soon after the fourth game was played, a bizarre series of protest and counter-protest threatened to bring the match to an abrupt halt. 

Toiletgate was how chess journalists everywhere were describing the developments in Elista. 

It all started with the Topalov camp complaining that Kramnik was spending too much time in his relaxation room’s toilet, walking in and out and spending time inside. Each player has his own private toilet and since the toilets were the only places without surveillance cameras, the insinuation was that Kramnik could be accessing some electronic devices there. 

Gasp! Cheating at the world championship match? There was no proof but the Appeals Committee decided to lock both private toilets and requested the two players to share a common, designated toilet.

This time, it was the Kramnik team’s turn to protest and Kramnik refused to play the fifth game until his private toilet was reopened. Well, it wasn’t and so, he forfeited this game.

This prompted a crisis in Elista with the whole unification match threatened with a meltdown. World Chess Federation (Fide) president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was forced to cut short a meeting with his boss, Russian president Vladimir Putin, to deal with it.

After some protracted negotiations, Kramnik’s right to use his private toilet was reinstated and the original Appeals Committee was replaced. In return, Kramnik had to accept that he had forfeited a point in fifth game.

He agreed to continue with the match but made it clear that he was playing under protest and he reserved the right to pursue this point later in court. 

So, after a dramatic four days, the match resumed. At first, Kramnik held on with two draws. Then disaster struck for him when he lost two consecutive games – the eighth and ninth. For the first time in the match, Topalov was leading 5-4.

However, with only three games remaining, it became Topalov’s turn to buckle under the pressure. He blundered in the 10th game and the score leveled at 5-5.

This is as far as I know as my deadline loomed earlier this week. If you have Internet access and had been following the games nightly, you will know that the match either ended yesterday with a decisive victory to one of the players or it had gone right down to the wire with a critical tie-break today. 

Remember, if there is a tie-break, you can follow the games live beginning 7pm this evening from the official world championship website http://worldchess2006.com or you can visit Susan Polgar’s excellent blog at http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/

UP NEXT

Penang chess camp

There will be a chess camp for junior chess players at the Han Chiang College on Dec 4-7. This chess camp, limited to a maximum of 100 participants only, will be conducted for four levels of strengths: elementary, beginner, intermediate and advanced.

For details, contact Marcus Yeoh (tel: 012.4723873, email: marcusypl@yahoo.com

11th GACC inter-varsity chess

The Tuanku Bahiyah Residential College (Second Residential College) of Universiti Malaya will organize the 11th edition of the Rakan Muda GACC world inter-varsity chess championship at the University on Dec 5-13.

This nine-round, Fide-rated annual event is open to all local and international universities, colleges and institutes of higher education. There will be both an individual and a team event. 

For inquiries, contact Jackson Toh (tel: 012.6702294, email: gacc11.director@gmail.com) or Belinda Lau (tel: 012.8812479, email: gacc11@yahoo.com), or you can visit the website at http://www28.brinkster.com/gaccwivcc/

Sarawak open

The Sarawak Chess Association will hold their Sarawak open chess tournament at the Borneo Chess Academy premises in Jalan Song, Kuching, on Dec 8-11. This will be played over nine rounds.

Entry fees are RM10 for women and under-18 players and RM20 for others. A deposit of RM10 is required, which is refunded when you complete the tournament.

To register, contact Lim Kian Hwa (tel: 016.8603180, email: lkhwa@tm.net.my or limkh@sarawaknet.gov.my) before Dec 5

It’s over even as it began

THIRTEEN YEARS ago, the chess crime of the century was committed. Gary Kasparov and Nigel Short committed an unthinkable crime when they hijacked the world championship match and took it outside of the World Chess Federation (Fide).

Since that watershed event in 1993, the world championship crown had gone two separate ways. 

Fide claimed that the world chess title was still theirs to organize legitimately. In response to the split, it sanctioned a match between Anatoly Karpov and Jan Timman, which Karpov won. 

Then, the format of the world chess championships changed and in quick succession, the title passed to Alexander Khalifman, Viswanathan Anand, Ruslan Ponomariov, Rustam Kasimdzhanov and Veselin Topolov.

On the other hand, Kasparov could choose and select whom he wanted to play with and as a result, preserved his hold on his so-called world chess crown until 2000 when he lost it to Vladimir Kramnik. 

During these 13 years, there had been several attempts to reunify the two titles but all were subsequently aborted because the players disagreed over the terms of the unification attempts.

However, the latest attempt to bring the two crowns together has now succeeded. 

Even as you read this, the fifth game will be played today between Kramnik and Topalov in Elista, the capital city of the autonomous Kalmyk Republic in Russia where the Kalmyk president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, doubles up as Fide’s president.

So it was with a great sense of anticipation last Saturday that I joined thousands of people around the world to watch the games unfold on the Internet. It would be a great match between two great players who are quite evenly matched. Who would prevail?

Common sense tells us that when you have two very experienced and world-class players playing one another, it will be a very tough but even match. In a 12-game match, maybe we’ll see either Topalov or Kramnik scraping through with something like only one or two points difference.

But what happened? 

On Saturday, the first game was evenly matched. Though Kramnik was one pawn ahead, Topalov could have easily forced a draw with his more active pieces. But he chose not to and he lost his way and the game. Score: 1-0 to Kramnik.

The second game on Sunday was full of fireworks. Topalov took the game to Kramnik and went for a kingside attack. At one point, he could have pressed home the advantage after Kramnik blundered but he overlooked it. There was no second chance and Kramnik steered the game into another win. Score; 2-0 to Kramnik.

I fear the unification match is over, even at this early stage. I do not see Topalov recovering from this disastrous start to a world championship match. He is no Bobby Fischer or even a Kasparov. There will be no miraculous recovery.

And Kramnik is no novice in the game. Remember, he beat Kasparov to be where he is today. Having taken Topalov’s measure, he will hunker down and consolidate his play, offering his opponent little chance of recovering lost ground.

Topalov will be forced to take even more risks in his play because every single draw will take Kramnik closer to winning the match. By taking more risks, he will self-destruct and be punished mercilessly by Kramnik.

At the end, this unification match will be a momentous event for chess but it will go down in history too as a big triumph for Kramnik and a better-to-be-forgotten disaster for Topalov.

Before this match began, Kasparov was asked in an interview whom he thought would be the winner. Interestingly, Kasparov hinted that Topalov was not the favourite that many people had assumed him to be. 

He made a very astute observation: “Kramnik has a more profound understanding of the game while Topalov has energy and confidence on his side.”

Another hint of the players’ relative strengths can be gleaned from the fact that prior to this unification match, Kramnik and Topalov had faced one another 39 times between 1994 and 2005, with Kramnik having won 10 times and Topalov five times, with the other games drawn. In their last encounter together, Kramnik had been the victor.

UP NEXT

Penang chess camp

The Penang Chess Association will organise a chess camp for junior chess players at the Han Chiang College on Dec 4-7. This chess camp, limited to a maximum of 100 participants only, will be conducted for four levels of strengths: elementary, beginner, intermediate and advanced.

For details, contact Marcus Yeoh (tel: 012.4723873, email: marcusypl@yahoo.com

Grandmaster, olive farmer

 

Short showdown

 

Times of change

 

PCA and Fide matches

 

More horror stories

 

Jakarta to the rescue

 

Match in jeopardy

 

World chess battle begins

 

Two great games begin

 

Stakes rise in world challenge

 

Barcenola to host championship

 

The quest for a new challenger, Penang open next month