So Young, Yet So Strong

Illya Nyzhnyk wins Group B in Moscow Open
Group B was won by Illya Nyzhnyk, who scored 8.5/9 points with a 2633 performance. The point is that this Ukrainian player, nominally rated 2217, is just ten years old! I can only get such performance in my dreams...
The kid in action

Elite Tournaments in February

According to The Week In Chess website @ http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html, there are 2 strong tournaments coming this month. Hobby players like me can take my own sweet time looking at games by those GMs again...

Linares/Morelia 2007
In addition the line up for the Morelia / Linares tournament (again in Mexico and Spain) has been announced. The Morelia half takes place 16th-25th February 2007 and Linares 2nd-11th March 2007.
The field is: Veselin Topalov, Viswanathan Anand, Peter Leko, Peter Svidler, Levon Aronian, Teimour Radjabov, Magnus Carlsen and Alexander Morozevich.


6th Aeroflot Festival
The 6th Aeroflot Festival takes place in Moscow. Day of arrival February 13th, day of departure February 23rd. 2007 In the previous 5 festivals 137 players achieved a FIDE norm. This is this year again possible.

The venue of the festival is the Delta Hotel of the Ismailova Center in Moscow, about 20 minutes from the center of Moscow by Metro.

There are 4 Swiss Tournaments: Tournament A1 for players with a rating over 2549 Tournament A2 for players with a rating over 2399, but lower than 2550 Tournament B for players with a rating over 2199, but lower than 2400 Tournament C for players with a rating lower than 2200 and without a rating. The organising committee allows some players to play in a tournament higher than the rating of the player indicates.

The total prize fund is $ 200.000.

Contacts: aeroflotchess@gmail.com tel/fax: +7 (495) 291-8578 or tel.: +7 (495) 290-6084

All details on regarding entry fee, visa, schedule, prizes are published on the website of the festival: http://www.aeroflotchess.com/

MCC06, Round 1

Last year during the Malaysia Chess Festival (end of August, 06) MCC (Malaysian Chess Challenge) was organised alongside with the Malaysian Open 06 at Cititel Hotel, Midvalley Megamall. Both events were FIDE rated but MCC was only for players rated below 2200. Yet I did poorly for the tournament scoring only 6/11 where I started the first 7 rounds with a blunder each round!

White to Move and Win!

This position was reached after Black played 22... Nf7??. However during the game, I did not notice the winning continuation and played 23Qe3. Though White finally won the game but not without some help from Black.

Replay the game here


Until then,
Tan Eu Hong

2 photos from USM Open 2007 (Team)

I should had brought my own camera to tournaments to take photos but even then, I cannot take photo of myself playing... Here are 2 photos of our team, Mind Chess Enterprise (Tutors) taken from GilaChess website @ http://www.gilachess.com

Day 1, Round 2, Mind Chess Enterprise(Tutors) vs Intel A

From top left, Tan Khai Boon (orange shirt), Anthony Liong, Loo Swee Leong, and me. Standing with white shirt is Ong Thian Loon of Vendetta. The match ended with 3.5-0.5 to our favor as Khai Boon was unable to convert his extra pawns in time trouble and conceded a draw to NM Ng Tze Han.

Day 2, Prize Giving Ceremony, we got 2nd and some of our team members went missing.

Cheers!!

Eu Hong

To Do List before CNY

Less than 2 weeks before CNY but before that, there are things I need to accomplish...

1) Chess Tactics Server
- 10,000 tries, 1700 rating, 81% success rate

2) Analysis of tournament games
- To analyze all my recent tournaments games and try to publish some over here

3) Speed up on the reading of Zurich 1953

4) Do more work out as normally, CNY == weight gaining season, so better lose some before gaining more... :P

5) Complete as much tasks on hand as possible before I go on long holidays which I am still considering whether to on leave or not...

6) Finally, return all borrowed stuff or things I'd owe people before CNY as tradition said...

Cheers!!
Eu Hong

New Library Item

Several reasons and excuses had prevented me from visiting the Borders @ Queensbay Mall and I finally went there yesterday.

I went straight to look for chess books and saw more than 10 titles sitting on the rack and 1 of them being "THE ART OF SACRIFICE IN CHESS by Rudolf Spielmann" which I grabbed instantly.

The book is on list of recommended out of print list by IM Jeremy Silman on his website (http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_reviews/list_recommend_op_bks.html) as on his site he give following comment:

THE ART OF SACRIFICE IN CHESS by Rudolf Spielmann (David McKay Company, Inc.,
198 pages). I picked up a lovely hardcover edition for $10.00, and used
paperbacks are far less. A very nice book.

That cost me RM43.90 for a new and recommended book which is not bad at all. Thus, another new item to my books library and another book on my book_to_read queue...

Cheers!!
Eu Hong

Tournament Calendar

Dec 06 and Jan 07 had been a busy chess playing period for me with 4 tournaments in a row and my results are good except for 1 event.

Most people is busy on Feb 07 as there are holidays on line with CNY as the major event so no chess tournament for me.

A quick view at the Chess Calendar at PCA Official website http://www.pca.bayanbaru.com and some other sites shows several events that are worth playing:
1) 18 Mar 07 CLHS Open**
2) 25 Mar 07 PFS Open**
3) 1 Apr 07 PCGHS Open**
4) 14-15 Apr 07 MMU Melaka Open (from my previous post)
5) Jun 07 National Closed Chess Championship**
** subject to confirmation

Event 1 to 4 serve as practice tournament before National Closed take place in Jun. Since the national closed will be hold in Penang, I will try all my best to qualify and play. One seldom got the chance to play in a national championship near home.

Several things before National Closed,
1) Finish what I am reading namely the Zurich 1953 book.
2) Go through and study the opening lines I had been playing for White and Black.
3) Work out physically.
4) Finally, day dreaming!! Yes, every chess players dream of getting a title one day! I am just another guy next door, so dreaming is part of my "routine"... hehehe...

May the force be with me,
Eu Hong

Cheating as they say...

Numerous site had been reporting on cheating during a chess game. A summary of the latest development that was published by chessbase.com @ http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3644 yesterday saw comments from websites or press releases of such events.

Chess was originally a pure game of mind which actually benefits the players on various area including studies, career and lifestyle if the players can apply the technique on chess to those areas. Yet, the cheating events had more or less affected its reputation amongst the public.

For average hobby players like me, a beautiful tactics or strategies in the game from the pros is what we dream of instead of the "tactics or strategies" among the pros that we want to see, since the more chaos they created, the lesser good games we get to appreciate...

Back on Track @ CTS

Friday is a "long" awaited day of the week for many working people like myself since we are having days off soon...


As usual, its time to review something I had done for the week, especially, chess.


I had been busy with application to further study and hence, I had only did very little on chess. No progress on book reading and analysis of my games but some good progress @ CTS (Chess Tactics Server).

I had managed to recover some lost ground on both rating and success rate after last week's blackout performance and hence end up with rating @ 1634(+37) and success @ 80.3%(+0.1%). Current tries are 8609 and are only 1391 tries from the 10000 tries, 1700 rating and 81% success rate goal. Not far in terms of tries, moderate progress in terms of rating (I had stuck at 16++ for almost 3000 tries) and very far in terms of success rate as gaining 0.7% better success rate is a big step!!

May the force be with me,

Eu Hong

CNY around the corner

Today, 2nd of Feb 07, means less than 16 days before chinese new year and counting down...