It’s All In The Planning!

Making a will is a cornerstone of estate planning. If approached properly, it can be a golden opportunity to plan more than just who will get your stuff after you die.

Even the simplest wills can offer invaluable peace of mind to those left behind. It’s bad enough grieving a loss without having to sort out a loved one’s messy finances at the same time. Wills streamline the process by saying out clearly who gets what as they minimize potential infighting among heirs.

What you lose by not having a will is the ability to direct who receives your property and how they receive it. For example, when a person dies without a will (legally, known as intestate), Malaysian law dictates that any children will receive their inheritance outright if they are already above 18 years old, not necessarily what a parent might want. With a will, you can specify that their assets be held in trust until they reach an older age.

A standard will enumerates the assets in an estate and names the beneficiaries, normally the spouse and children, but may also include external parities such as a favoured charity. It allows the testator (the person making the will) to name an executor to make sure the terms of the will are respected. This can be a relative or a friend — anyone you trust to carry out your wishes.

A will also allows for the documentation of other critical provisions, like the naming of guardians for surviving minor children or the creation of a trust to hold and manage assets. You should name a backup guardian or trustee, in case your first choice is unable or unwilling to serve when the time comes, and a competent estate planner should advise naming a backup to your backup. Finding at least three trusted individuals who will render you this important service may require some deep thought, and some quiet conversations. Alternatively, appointing a trust corporation as your executor may be your best solution, if you are unable to decide on a trusted individual.

One way of keeping things clear and simple is to place your main assets in a revocable living trust, so named because the trustee — the owner of the assets — is alive and retains control of the assets during his or her lifetime. Upon the trustee’s death, the trust becomes irrevocable and the assets are distributed according to the terms established by the trustee, without the involvement of the court.

But while making a will would seem to be a no-brainer, surprisingly few people have them. It is estimated that only about 10 percent of eligible non-Muslim Malaysians would have already written their Wills. This leaves a vast majority who procrastinate or think they do not need one. Interestingly, those who believe they don’t need a Will often say that they do not have many assets to give away. But it should also be realised that the fewer one’s assets, the easier it probably is to make a Will.

Since 1995, will writing services have become readily available to Malaysians. Rockwills Corporation is, of course, the pioneer player in this will-writing industry and it has the expertise to fulfil the needs and requirements of any person who wishes to have his Will drafted.

To know more about Rockwills services, click here.

The law provides for security of tenure but when it comes to fixed-term contracts, there may be limitations.

SOMETIMES an opportunity comes along for a well-paying job that appears too good to give a miss. One may already be holding a job that pays a fair salary with an assurance of security of tenure until retirement. Yet the job now being offered may have remuneration and benefits that are almost irresistible.

However, the new job is offered on a three-year term with an option for renewal. One reader who is faced with such a situation wants to know how he can protect himself from being arbitrarily terminated in his new employment and losing out on the security of tenure he now enjoys.

Read the rest of this story here.

This is from a Bernama report today. The Ministry of Higher Education cited a study by the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers to give the top five reasons for unemployment among university graduates.

The first two reasons are a lack of industrial training and a poor command of the English language. Other factors are low problem-solving skills, job-hopping and lack of self-confidence, said Higher Education Ministry student development and affairs director Prof Dr Mohd Fauzi Ramlan.

He said as graduates were bogged down with poor communication skills in English, they should improve their command of the language. “They have themselves to blame if they fail to convince employers on their potential,” and added that graduates should also avoid being choosy about jobs and shrug off bad attitude of preferring to work in ones’ hometown.

Chess development in the country will be given a boost with the arrival of Bangladeshi grandmaster Ziaur Rahman.

THERE are a number of interesting chess activities coming up in the next two or three weeks.

First up is the news that we shall have Bangladeshi grandmaster Ziaur Rahman stationed here in Malaysia for the next one year. Ziaur is Bangladesh’s second grandmaster and the leading player in his country at present. He is expected to arrive on our shores sometime next week and will be based at the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre (DATCC) in Kuala Lumpur.

Why would we need a foreign grandmaster here in Malaysia? Well, it is to boost chess development in the country. We need someone who is experienced enough to be a catalyst to raise our game. Ziaur happened to be available and he was interested in the challenge.

  Bangladeshi grandmaster Ziaur Rahman will be based in Malaysia for a year.

Moreover, he comes with good credentials. He is an active player in the regional chess circuit so he’s not one to rest on his laurels. He led Bangladesh at the Asian team chess championship in Kolkata last December, took part in an international chess event in Delhi in January, and made an impressive second-place finish in the Chennai open chess tournament this month.

Ziaur’s international rating of 2548 is high enough to suit Malaysia’s needs. We don’t need a super-GM here but we do need a professional who is strong enough to impart his knowledge and experience to our players.

Ziaur is a trainer at the Garry Kasparov School of Chess in Bangladesh and was the coach of the Bangladesh national women’s chess team. He has trained many junior players in his homeland and neighbouring India, and counts Sayantan Das, the current under-12 world chess champion who recently secured his first international master norm, as a notable student.

A comprehensive programme has been prepared to make full use of him during his time here. There will be various events and tournaments featuring Ziaur as the main man, with seminars and classes, including trips to reach out to all corners of the country.

Some of the activities planned will be individual chess sessions for serious players who want to improve their skill and understanding of the game, and group classes covering topics such as preparations for tournaments, opening, middle game and endgame techniques.

He’ll be giving chess seminars and training to suit all manner of chess enthusiasts, including parents, supporters, officials and organisers.

Ziaur will be available to take part in local chess tournaments and I hear that there’ll be monthly rapid chess events and quarterly Fide-rated tournaments. He will also be available for outstation trips, so state chess associations and clubs can arrange for him to visit them.

For enquiries into Ziaur’s programme, contact Najib Wahab (016-338 2542, najib.wahab@hotmail.com).

Upon his arrival, Ziaur will be whisked to Ipoh to take part in the first leg of the Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng Perak grand prix, which is sponsored by Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd.

Ten legs are scheduled for this tournament which will visit various towns in Perak such as Taiping (April), Parit Buntar (April), Lumut (May), Parit (June), Teluk Intan (July), Kampar (August), Grik (September) and Kuala Kangsar (October), with the grand final set for Ipoh in December. The Perak International Chess Association (Pica) will be organising the events together with DATCC.

The first leg will kick off at Wisma Belia in Jalan Ghazali Jawi, Ipoh, on March 7, with the participation of at least 150 players including Ziaur. The total prize money is RM1,720 with with consolation prizes for the under-16, girls’ under-16, under-12 and girls’ under-12 sections.

Entry fees are RM25 for the open section, RM15 for under-16 players and RM10 for under-12 players. Pica members and players born in Perak pay RM5 less. Payment must be made to Pica by March 4. For further details, visit perakchess.blogspot.com.

Here’s an interesting story picked up from a London online newspaper. Interesting read.

When Dr Christine Gill last month successfully challenged her mother’s will, which had bequeathed the £2 million family farm in North Yorkshire to the RSPCA, it was just the latest in an increasingly long line of disputes over wills to have been picked over by the media.

Contentious probate is the new divorce. The cases have all the elements of human drama — money, family feuds, long-buried grudges, often mistresses and dark secrets — and are all the more intriguing because the key witness is, by definition, unavailable.

The High Court ruled that Dr Gill’s late father had coerced his wife to go against her own wishes to leave the farm to their daughter. Further, given Dr Gill’s work on the farm and that she had cared for her parents for more than 30 years, as well as assurances from both that she would inherit, the court said it would be “unconscionable” if she did not. The RSPCA intends to appeal.

The Gill case is evidence of a rising trend in probate disputes. Research by the London law firm Wedlake Bell this year found that 228 such disagreements reached the courts in 2008, compared with 83 in 2006. A survey of 3,000 people in March by another London firm, Seddons, found that one in ten had been or were in dispute after a death in the preceding six months.

Marvin Simons, Seddons’s head of dispute resolution, identifies three main causes: the property boom, which has produced more estates worth fighting over, a greater awareness of rights, and “more complicated and dysfunctional family structures” — problems can occur when parents divorce and have second families. He describes a “vulture syndrome” of greedy beneficiaries falling out; one in four people surveyed said legacies had caused rows with friends or family.

The size of some estates means the biggest law firms in the City get involved. Rupert Ticehurst, head of private wealth and charities at Herbert Smith, says challenges to a person’s capacity to make their will are increasingly common. “With people getting older and making wills in their 70s and 80s, this is more likely to be questioned,” he explains. Further, greater understanding of mental health means capacity can later be assessed from medical files.

There are various routes to challenging wills but “it’s not fair” is not enough, says Fay Copeland, head of contentious probate at Wedlake Bell. But this is emotional territory. “People see their legacy as a reflection of how the parent or grandparent felt about them,” she says. “You have to treat this differently from a commercial dispute.”

So lawyers need to offer more than legal help. Mark Keenan, the partner at the London firm Mishcon de Reya who acted for Dr Gill, says that will disputes “can be incredibly painful and stressful, and inevitably there is an element of counselling clients in the wider sense as well as advising them”.

Jeremy Kosky, litigation partner at Clifford Chance, says that an opportunity to rant can be cathartic for clients as well as part of the process of identifying all aspects of the problem. “It is often the moment when misgivings or misunderstandings become most apparent,” he says. “The best approach is always to let the rant run its course. Do not pretend it didn’t happen. Showing that you have listened is important and you can best do this by taking the points head on.”

This all makes mediation an attractive option, although Ms Copeland warns against trying it too early: “People do need time for anger.”

They also need time to understand the risks of continuing with litigation. In his review of litigation costs, Lord Justice Jackson observed that the Jarndyce v Jarndyce syndrome is still alive, “where, as occurred in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, the end of the litigation only came when the entire estate of the deceased had been swallowed up by costs”.

“No win, no fee” agreements and after-the-event legal expenses insurance are starting to crop up in this area — Mishcons put both in place during the Gill case.

Executors also have to think carefully when spending money on such disputes, adds Ms Copeland. “There is always the risk that if they don’t take the right course of action, the beneficiaries could take action against them.”

Charities too can find themselves in a difficult position when a legacy in their favour is challenged by family members. Mr Keenan recognises that “there is a concern within the charitable sector that if charities don’t fight these claims simply to avoid the adverse publicity that goes with a trial, they will be seen as a soft touch”.

Experts agree that it is impossible to draft a bomb-proof will — Mr Ticehurst recalls a case where the testator was even examined by a psychiatrist to confirm that he had capacity to make his will, only for a judge later to prefer the opinion of an expert who had not met him (capacity is a legal, rather than medical, test). But if you intend to exclude someone who might have expected to inherit, at least explain why in the will or a letter of wishes.

In broad terms, the law gives us freedom to dispose of our property after death however we wish. But Mr Ticehurst sees evidence of the courts starting to impose “a civil law-style forced heirship rule”. He says: “Judges’ moral road map is that a father should leave his assets to his children.”

Veselin Topalov heads the field at the Linares.

THIS week, we are caught in the midst of the Linares tournament. The Linares super-grandmaster tournament, like the Corus event three weeks ago, is considered one of the elite tournaments which make up the chess version of a Grand Slam. Only the best in the chess world get invited to Linares and this year, the invitation list was shorter.

Where previously there used to be as many as 14 players in the annual tournament, the 2010 edition of Linares is reduced to just six participants. The last time the field had been so small was in 2001. However, the participants are of world-class standard, all currently placed within the top 30 players in the world.

  Veselin Topalov

So, imagine a field headed by Veselin Topalov: a previous World Chess Federation (FIDE) champion from Bulgaria and currently, the second highest ranked player in the world. (He was No.1 in the world from April 2006 to January 2007 and again from October 2008 to January 2010).

Topalov is an enterprising player that creates energy on the chessboard. He sees resources where others may well get bogged down in complications. From what I’ve seen so far from his games in Linares, they are stuff to excite any onlooker.

Topalov is the favourite to win the tournament in Linares this year. The last time he won was in 2005 when he was co-winner with Garry Kasparov. (Incidentally, it was at the end of this very event that Kasparov announced his retirement from competitive chess to concentrate on his writing and political career.)

However, it remains to be seen how far Topalov is willing to push himself in this tournament. In just two months, he will be challenging Viswanathan Anand for the world chess championship crown.

The Linares tournament fits well into his preparations and is obviously a gauge of his readiness to face the world champion from India but how much of it is he willing to reveal to his rival? Topalov knows that Anand and his team will be watching his performance very keenly.

But I’m sure that is only a small worry for Topalov. A professional like him will always be concentrating solely on the task at hand. In Linares, this means the stiff challenges from the other competitors. Any of his five rivals is also a close contender for the first prize but none will be closer than Levon Aronian, the grandmaster from Armenia.

Like Topalov, Aronian is a previous winner at Linares but unlike Topalov, Aronian was the undisputed winner in 2006. That year, Topalov could finish in only third place. Since then, the Armenian has been a regular face in this Spanish town. Obviously, he is looking forward to winning the event for a second time.

The other players in Linares are Vugar Gashimov from Azerbaijan, Boris Gelfand from Israel, Alexander Grischuk from Russia and Spain’s own Francisco Vallejo Pons.

As a measure of the close competition between the two main contenders, here is their third-round game from Linares.

White: Levon Aronian
Black: Veselin Topalov

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 c5 4.d5 exd5 5.cxd5 d6 6.Nc3 g6 7.Bg2 Bg7 8.Nf3 0-0 9.0-0 Re8 10.Nd2 a6 11.a4 Nbd7 12.h3 Rb8 13.Nc4 Nb6 14.Na3 Bd7 15.e4 Nc8 16.Qd3 Re7 (The sign of an imaginative mind. The rook will be heading to the c7 square) 17.Rb1 Be8 18.b4 cxb4 19.Rxb4 Rc7 20.Bd2 Nd7 21.Rc1 Nc5 22.Qb1 b5 23.axb5 a5 24.Rb2 Nb6 25.Ra2 a4 26.Ne2 Rcb7 (Black has given up a pawn to reach this interesting position. However, White is not without resources) 27.Bf4 Nc8 28.Rxc5 dxc5 29.Bxb8 Rxb8 30.f4 (Will White’s occupation of the centre prove decisive? Will Black be able to neutralise those dangerous pawns in the centre?) 30…g5 31.e5 gxf4 32.gxf4 f6 33.Qe4 fxe5 34.fxe5 Qg5 35.Nc4 Bxb5 36.h4 Qg6 37.Qxg6 hxg6 38.Rb2 Nd6 (That’s a brilliant move. Obviously, White cannot capture the knight with his pawn and so, his only reply is …) 39.Nxd6 a3 40.Ra2 Bxe2 41.Rxe2 Bxe5 (Black’s final resource. The bishop on e5 is immune to capture because 42.Rxe5 will lose to 42 … a2 and 43 … Rb1) 42.Nc4 Bb2 43.Nxa3 Bxa3 44.Re6 c4 45.Rxg6+ (Winning a pawn but the game is heading to a draw) 45 … Kf7 46.Rc6 Rh8 47.Rc7+ Kf8 48.Rxc4 Be7 49.Rc8+ Kg7 50.Rxh8 Kxh8 51.h5 ½-½ (Despite the two pawns, White can never make any headway in the remainder of this game.)

Note: You can follow the games live on the official website for the Linares tournament at ajedrez.ciudaddelinares.es/index.htm but be advised that everything is in Spanish.

This year’s calendar of chess activities looks decently full.

THE biggest story last week was the welcome news that chess, together with 10 other sports, have been reinstated into the calendar of the Malaysian Schools Sports Council (MSSM).

Well, I don’t know how long this is going to last but at least for this year, schools and the State Schools Sports Councils can continue running their annual school chess competitions. There’ll also be a national-level MSSM chess championship to look forward to.

The removal of the 11 sports from the MSSM programme was a sore point which had parents voicing their unhappiness over the matter in the newspapers as well as through the Internet.

For once though, parents’ opinions have been heard and the policy about-turn was made by Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also the Education Minister. He acknowledged that many quarters had been disappointed with the MSSM decision to reduce the number of sports from its calendar.

“I have issued a directive for all the sports to be reinstated,” he said, adding that there would be an additional allocation of RM89mil under the 10th Malaysia Plan for school sports infrastructure.

Of course, the reinstatement of chess in the school calendar will not affect or derail other age group chess programmes run independently by other chess bodies.

Come March 14, the national age group chess championship will proceed as planned. This is a Malaysian Chess Federation event which has been going on many years. This time, however, the tournament will be played outside the Klang Valley. The venue has yet to be ascertained but the MCF and the Penang Chess Association are joint organisers.

The MCF is holding a national scholastics age group championship from May 28 to 30, while the national rapid age group tournament has been scheduled for Sept 5.

Talking about the MCF calendar, I see that this year’s calendar of chess activities looks decently full. Chess enthusiasts shouldn’t have any grounds to complain.

The calendar kicks off with a two-day chess event during Chinese New Year week: the resumption of the annual Malaysia-Singapore match. The last time this event was held was in 2008. Now it’s MCF’s turn to play host to our Singapore friends from Feb 16 to 17.

This double round chess match will be played over 40 boards and will take place at Cititel Express in Kuala Lumpur. On Tuesday, the players shall fight over two games played with long time controls while on Wednesday, there’ll be two games with rapid time controls.

If our top players can take some time off from their Chinese New Year celebrations, this will be a very keenly contested match. And if you can spare some time off from your own celebration, come and support the Malaysian team in action.

Also slated for this month is the Malaysian Women’s Master tournament from Feb 26, with 16 playing in knock-out matches.

April will see two big local events. At the beginning of the month, from April 6 to 12, the Kuala Lumpur Chess Association will hold its KL Open event. Then from April 29 to May 2, it will be the turn of the Chess Association of Selangor to organise the Selangor Open.

June’s events include the Penang Open from June 10 to 14, the national closed championship and the national women’s closed championship from June 16 to 20. In July, expect the second Malaysian Masters tournament to take place.

Traditionally, August is the month of the Malaysian Chess Festival which includes the Arthur Tan Malaysian Open tournament, the AmBank Chess Challenge and the Merdeka team championship. However, for this year, both the Malaysian Open and the Chess Challenge have been pushed to Sept 1 to 8, which leaves the Merdeka team tournament as the only big item slotted for August.

As part of the Malaysian Chess Festival, there may be a new event introduced this year: the Seniors Open chess championship. This event has been discussed in private at MCF level since last year. I believe that if this tournament becomes a reality, it will generate a lot of interest among older chess players in the region.

In November, there will be the 15th GACC Chess Challenge organised by Universiti Malaya and in December, both the Malaysian inter-state team chess championship and the third national junior chess championship will take place.

What should you do if you are an unemployed professional in the job market with years of skilled experience?

According to a placement consultant in the United States, don’t act desperate when you approach potential employers. “It’s a bad idea,” said Arleen Gallagher of Adecco. She said that if you come across as desperate, the employer would think that all you wanted was the pay cheque. You wouldn’t be thinking of doing serious work and if anything better came along, you’d be leaving.”

So instead of acting desperate when applying for a job, she recommended that experienced job seekers should:

1. Emphasise on your experience and education, meaning you can take on more responsibility later when times get better;
2. Tell the new boss how you can make their life easier; and
3. If necessary, dumb down the resume.

“I would never suggest  that you lie in your resume, but you can simplify it. That’s what people are doing right now,” said Gallagher. Also, she suggested keeping an open mind and not to be afraid of trying something new as experience in one industry will likely cross over into another line of work.

Here’s a story picked up from TimesOnline recently. It asked the question of whether you’d want to be an executor and it went on to describe the burden of being it. Interesting read.
No one tells you how time-consuming death is. The Four Last Things ought to be Death, Judgment, Heaven – and Probate. That desolate telephone call from the hospice tips you down a chute into a nether world of callous, grasping and bewildered people (of all ages) and caring (well, most of them) professionals. Some of these categories overlap.

I don’t worry too much about my own death – like Woody Allen, I just don’t want to be there when it happens – but I should have worried much, much more about that of the old friend who halfway through his long, humorously borne decline asked me if I would be one of the executors of his will, or as lawyers call it, Will. As most of us would be, I was flattered at the implied compliment to my personal integrity and organisational powers – it was like being given a medal for being me. “Executor”: that sounded good, too. So of course I said yes.

This friend – let’s call him Fred – died much sooner than anyone expected; I still don’t think he did it out of malice. He had been a successful businessman who had made a small fortune in the advertising industry, had a good understanding of the basics of personal finance and whose advisers, legal and financial, were reputable firms (which means I’d vaguely heard of them).

He had made a recent will. His money had been earned from fully thought-out, carefully planned, well-executed communication and he was aware that his adored widow – or rather partner and co-habitee of 40 years, which is another story - would be wholly reliant on whatever arrangements he left. So probate would simply be a couple of agreeable lunches reminiscing about our late chum, signing a few papers handed across by old-fashioned lawyers with dandruffy cardigans and Bob’s your uncle. Or so I thought.

This nonchalance turned out to be delusively far from the reality. Oh, and Uncle Bob said “he always wanted me to have that Queen Anne bureau”.

One of the first preconceptions to go is that everything happens at a funereal pace. This is particularly untrue of funerals. How anyone gets one organised in a week or so is beyond me. Although an executor would not necessarily be involved, I was a friend of the family as well. It took nearly two weeks. Even that was possible only because several of us were able in effect to drop everything.

Because no one knew Fred’s wishes, every one of scores of decisions – cremation or burial, wake at the flat, church hall or the pub, where can we find a CD with Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah on it - had to be agreed with what seemed like 27 people, not all sane, some of whom opposed what the majority wanted just on principle, many of whom, being media persons of antediluvian habits, enjoy a glass of sherry before lunch. This had to be explained to the bank – which met direct funeral expenses – when later presenting them with a bar bill of more than £1,600.

There’s a lot to think about straightaway apart from the funeral, too. The household was run from Fred’s current account, which was immediately frozen, no money in or out, including standing orders and direct debits for such inessentials as mortgage payments, gas, electricity and the telephone. But Fred had cash savings well into six figures. Can’t BT have just a little bit? No, says caring bank, funeral expenses only.

Partner freezing and starving on street? Should have got married (a true statement, by the way, from the practical point of view). In the end, another family member had to take over the liabilities, with no certainty as to when repayment would be made – and was still bankrolling the whole shooting match three months down the line, which is about average for a “simple” estate.

We had numberless letters, all apparently from the same computer – it’s probably called Deep Sympathy - saying “sorry for your loss, sincere condolences, send us a death certificate, get probate, bye for now”. Quite a number also appeared to say in effect “you can’t have the information you need to get probate until you’ve got probate”. If I were to offer one piece of advice to the first-timer, it would be to get ten copies of the certificate when you register the death: you will need them all.

And you’ll need a lawyer, an accountant, an efficient and friendly estate agent, plus someone to value all Fred’s stuff (not Uncle Bob, however kindly his offer may be meant) and someone else, probably another accountant, to value Fred’s business, all to be appointed with less time to assess the choices than you’d spend in the supermarket wine section on Friday evening. Get them lined up in advance if you can. To my great good fortune, my co-executor is a marvel of energy, practicality and good humour.

This is, of course, to say nothing of tracking down all the insurance companies, building societies, credit cards, shop accounts, club memberships and charities of which a modern urban life is composed – and this is for someone who had, as he thought, left his affairs in good order…. It is also to say nothing of those with an eye to the main chance: we had a little sweepstake about who it would be who first asked “oh, by the way, am I in the will?” The stress is extraordinary.

But it could have been different! Fred had started using, at the end of his life, the website

There is a section for those who want to give formal instructions and express wishes in respect of their own death, whether untimely and sudden, after a long illness or in old age. The topics range from legal and financial issues, who to be informed, personal and business, account numbers, contact names, and so on, to the details of funeral arrangements, for example.

Another section goes into the legal and red tape side, but also pays attention to the emotional side. It is, I believe – and I must declare an interest, having become involved, on a voluntary basis - the only site providing all this diverse material in one place.

Even the elements of the site that Fred had got round to using made our task easier in many ways, not least the avoidance of some of the arguments about “what he would have wanted.” Asked again to be someone’s executor, I would say “yes” again - on condition they use Lasting Post.

Young chess talents from around the world are making their mark in the sport.

IF I’m tasked with drawing up a wish list of the top three chess events to follow through the Internet this year, I wouldn’t have any problem in identifying the world chess championship match this April between Viswanathan Anand and Veselin Topalov, and the end-of-year Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk, as among them.

The third? This has got to be a no-brainer choice for me. It can only be the annual tournament at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands. Chess people know it better as the Corus chess tournament.

The Corus chess tournament goes back a very long time but in those old days, the event wasn’t known as Corus. That came much later in year 2000. When the event began in 1938, it was known simply as the Hoogovens tournament, named after the Dutch steel and aluminium producer, Koninklijke Hoogovens.

In 1999, this company merged with British Steel and the new entity became the Corus Group.

So this tournament is steeped in history. Earlier this week, the latest in the long line of Corus chess tournaments ended in Wijk aan Zee. Its main attraction was the 14-man Group A event that featured some of the world’s top players, including Viswanathan Anand (the current world chess champion), Vladimir Kramnik (a previous classical chess world champion) and Magnus Carlsen (currently the highest-ranked player in the world).

The other participants included some of the most well-known veterans in international chess: Alexei Shirov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Peter Leko and the evergreen Nigel Short.

Chess today is dominated by younger players. Apart from Carlsen, 19, the other “babies” of the Group A tournament were Sergey Karjakin (20), Hikaru Nakamura (22) and Fabiano Caruana (17). But of course, how can I call Carlsen a baby when he is presently the highest ranked player in the world and was a co-winner at Corus two years ago?

And in all seriousness, Karjakin is no baby chess player either, because he has impeccable chess credentials. He started off in Corus this year as the defending champion but his crown was snatched away by Carlsen.

So there we have it, in the last three years the most significant feature of the Corus chess tournaments was the domination of teenaged chess grandmasters. Carlsen was only 17 when he became a joint winner in 2008.

Karjakin was 19 when he won the event in 2009. And now in 2010, Carlsen has won the tournament outright at 19.

By the way, Carlsen wasn’t the only teenager making a great splash at this year’s Corus event. In the Group B tournament, another teenager was creating a lot of interest: Anish Giri, 15, of the Netherlands. Giri, whose father is Nepalese, was born and raised in Russia. In February 2009, he qualified as a chess grandmaster and at that time, he was also the world’s youngest. Giri won the Group B event ahead of many of his contemporaries.

For good measure, I also want to mention that the Corus Group C tournament was won by Li Chao, 20, from China. Li will get his chance to play in the Group B tournament next year, just as Giri will also get his chance in next year’s Group A tournament.

This week, I’d like to feature an exciting game that was played in the final round of the Corus Group A tournament between Shirov and Leinier Dominguez.

At the critical point in the game when the two players agreed to a draw, Shirov was actually winning. However, chess is not played on position alone. There’s also the time factor to contend with and both players were tremendously short on time at that stage of the game.

After the game, Shirov discovered that had he pressed on to win the game, he would have won the tournament too, overtaking Carlsen at the top of the standings.

White: Alexei Shirov
Black: Leinier Dominguez

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 Nbd7 7.Bc4 Qb6 8.Bb3 e6 9.Qd2 Be7 10.0–0–0 Nc5 11.f3 Qc7 12.Kb1 0–0 13.g4 b5 14.a3 Rb8 15.h4 Bd7 16.Bxf6 Bxf6 17.g5 Bd8 18.h5 a5 19.g6 Nxb3 20.Nxb3 fxg6 21.hxg6 h6 22.Nxa5 (The start of all the complications. White could have chosen the straight-forward 22.Qxd6 and won a pawn) 22….Rxf3 23.e5 Be8 24.exd6 Qxa5 25.Rxh6 gxh6 26.Qxh6 Bf6 27.d7 Bxc3 28.dxe8Q+ Rxe8 (White needs to be very careful because a careless 29.Rd7 loses to 29….Rf1+ 30.Ka2 Ra1+ and he will be checkmated) 29.Qh1 (This could easily have been the Move Of The Game, a quiet sort of move that protects the back rank and now really threatening 30.Rd7 next) 29….Re7 30.Qxf3 Bg7 ½-½ (White should be winning after 31.b4 Qc7 22.Qa8+ Bf8 33.Rf1 etc)