After 3 rounds of play, China, Armenia, Vietnam and India have a fair share of the 8 leaders with the full 3/3 points. The best Malaysia players are Mok Tze-Meng and Ronnie Lim at 40th and 42nd place with 2/3 points.

A total of 133 players from 18 countries take part in this event include 2 from Russia.

中国棋手纷纷过关包括

2006-2008  世界女子冠军， 许昱华

周唯奇
修德顺
温阳
徐俊
许昱华
谭中怡
Wan Yunguo
黄茜
Zeng Chongsheng
Wang Li
Yu Ruiyuan
WFM Ding Yixin
Jia Haoxiang
Li Hanbin
Lu Yijie
Wang Jue

和棋的有
高睿
Guo Qi

官方网站

The 3 events were officially started with the 1st move on Dato’ Tan’s board. Dato’ Tan is the oldest player taking part in this Merderka Chess Festival.

tn_img_1735.JPG

Glad to see the results and pairing is up in the Chess-Results.com

 Chess Results Website.

Due to the relatively weak field of players in the Ambank Challenge, 5 strong foreign players join the fight and were seeded at the top. Jax who was top seeded become the 6th seed.

Lost my game to a young Penang boy after I missed a tactical combination to win back a pawn that I sacrificed early in the opening and with a better middle game. The boy was extremely patient to calculate a R+K vs 2P+K ending, up to the last minute and get a theoritical win. One of pawns is a Rook pawn at 5th rank protected by the King.

Attended the players’ meeting this evening. There seems to be some withdrawals for the DATMO especially players from Philippines as reported by Mr. Quah Seng Sun in the Star 2 weeks ago but the numbers of participant still is the largest (to be confirmed)  in all DATMO.

A total of 19 players (as at the meeting) will be taking part in the Senior tournament i.e. the Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng International Seniors Open including 1 GM, 2 IMs and 1 FM. Dato’ Tan Chin Nam is also taking part. Due to the number of players, it had been agreed that the numbers of rounds to be reduced to 7.

There is also a minor change in the schedule for all 3 events. The game will begin at 9:30 am instead of 9:00am as published.

Visited Cititel this morning to watch the Astro Rapid Team Championship. I think it is very lucky for the event to get support from blogger like Firey_Rook and NWM khairunnisa to update the event beside Andrew Ooi (a.k.a. Gilachess).

I had visited some blogs or websites and I noticed that there are comments by viewers who were pretty upset not able to look at latest results. I think their comments are quite valid. The organiser to should take effort to email the results/pairings to interested bloggers that are willing to help updating their blog as it bring benefits to both parties and also Chess in Malaysia.

Unless one is a professional Chess player, who probably eat and sleep with Chess, most amateur player will probably need to prepare for a tournament if he want to have good results. In fact,  professional players also need to prepare but it could be much different than us.

For the coming Merdeka Ambank Challenger, I also don’t have much time to prepare but at least one have to have a plan. E.g.

Opening, prepare regular opening a 1 backup for White. More work need to be done as Black. Need to prepare one line for e4, d4 and c4. Other opening like Nf3, f4 or b3 but these can be transpose to other major opening.

Endgame, refresh some of the basic principals

Middle game/Tactic, solving online tactic like Chess Tactic Server or Chesstempo.com

Practice online or play with friends.

What percentage of time you allocate for each category depends on the area of strengths and weakness. You can use some Chess engines to analyst a game and find out the main reason a game is lost like opening? tactic?

Every year for the last 4 years, I had been taking part in one FIDE rated individual tournament. Last year, I played in the CAS Open, National Open in 2008 and CAS Open in 2007 and 2006.

For the first time,  I will try out the Ambank Chess Challenge in this coming Malaysia Chess Festival 2010.

Let’s how it go. Wish me luck

The 7th Dato Arthur Tan Malaysia Open is going to kick off on the on 28th August with the Astro Merdeka Individual Rapid Open. It had been quite a long time since I took part in the Merdeka Tournament. I remembered it was many years ago when I joined Lee Soi Hock, Eddy Foong, Joseph Lau and one Indonesia Chess friend (forgot his name) in the rapid team tournament. The tournament was still played at 2nd floor Wilayah Complex the then The Chess Network. We were unfortunate to meet the top seed from China (with the inclusion of NM Yeoh Chin Seng at board 4). We lost 0.5-3.5 with a draw from our Indonesia team mate. The rest is history.

So after a lapse of almost 10 years, I will be playing again.