AFTER the excitement of the Malaysian Chess Festival, the focus of the chess community has turned to the Raja Nazrin Shah invitational masters and international open chess championships at the Swiss Garden Hotel & Residences in Kuala Lumpur.

These two tournaments started on Monday and are now towards their tail-end. There are only three more rounds to be played before conclusion. Today sees the seventh round starting at 9am, and the eighth round beginning at 3pm, while the ninth (and final) round will be played tomorrow morning.

The first event was the Raja Nazrin Shah invitational masters tournament in which the organisers had invited 10 players to the round-robin tournament. Originally, the Filipino grandmaster, Joseph Sanchez, was supposed to play in the invitational but at the technical meeting on Sunday, he agreed to make way for the young Indian international master, Das Arghyadip, who was in search of his final grandmaster title norm.

Sanchez thus found himself competing with 65 other players in the Raja Nazrin Shah international open tournament instead.

The round-robin invitational tournament boasts a rather interesting mix of players. Apart from Arghyadip, the other nine players include grandmasters Nguyen Anh Dung of Vietnam and Singapore’s Dr Wong Meng Kong. Then there are the father-and-son duo of grandmaster Tahir Vakhidov and international master Jahongir Vakhidov from Uzbekistan. The remaining players are all international masters: Richard Bitoon and Oliver Barbosa, both from the Philippines, Nguyen Van Huy from Vietnam, Goh Wei Ming from Singapore and our very own Mas Hafizulhelmi.

As for the open tournament, the number of participants eventually settled at 66. I was told by the tournament director, Peter Long, that he was quite relieved with this number as earlier, he kept getting enquiries from grandmasters and the number of participants had threatened to spill out of control.

As he was organising only one open event, he would prefer to keep the tournament at a manageable number and not turn it top heavy. He reasoned that too many grandmasters playing in the tournament could crowd out the lower-ranked local players whom he was encouraging to take part.

Perhaps he has a point there because this open tournament had attracted 16 local participants that included our current national champion Lim Zhuo Ren and current national women’s champion Nur Nabila Azman Hisham. That’s almost 25% of the field.

Nevertheless, a 66-player field that can boast of enough depth in three grandmasters (Sanchez, Susanto Megaranto and Cerdas Barus), 12 international masters, two woman grandmasters and two woman international masters cannot be that bad, can it?

The two events are organised by the Kuala Lumpur Chess Association with sponsorship from the Masterskill Education Group Bhd under its Educating Malaysia Corporate Social Responsibility programme.

ONE clear sign of the eighth Arthur Tan Malaysia open chess championship that ended at the Cititel Midvalley Hotel last week was the sheer dominance of the Chinese players. The Chinese have always been fervent supporters of the Malaysian Chess Festival – of which the Malaysia open is just one of the three main events – and they sent a contingent of 20 players to participate in this showcase event.

Frankly, I did not notice any big names among the Chinese unless one counted their woman grandmaster, Ju Wenjun, who had come out tops in July at the first Hangzhou women grandmaster chess tournament, ahead of the reigning women’s world champion, Hou Yifan.

I was very interested to follow her form since that event and I wasn’t disappointed. She was always among the leaders and had ended the Malaysia open placed in sixth position. Her play grew from strength to strength as the tournament approached its finish and she scored two great wins in the eighth and ninth rounds against Filipino grandmaster Oliver Dimakiling and Vietnamese grandmaster Cao Sang.

A momentous occasion: (From left) Dmitry Kayumov (International seniors champion), Sarvinoz Kurbonboeva (Chess challenge champion) and Li Shilong (Malaysia open champion).

Some readers may remember Cao Sang as the Malaysia open winner last year. He didn’t have the same luck this year and was almost unbeaten in the tournament until he met Ju, in that ninth round.

Now, you may wonder why I said that the Chinese had dominated this year’s Malaysia open championship. Apart from the petite Ju, who finished sixth, the top five winners were also Chinese.

The new winner of the Malaysia open was their grandmaster Li Shilong. He last played in this event in 2008, finishing in eighth position. This year, he was in the limelight by winning the Arthur Tan challenge trophy and the first prize of US$4,000 (RM12,000).

Second was Chinese international master Lu Shanglei, followed by their grandmaster Wen Yang in third place, Wan Yunguo in fourth and their grandmaster Wang Rui in fifth.

In the sixth AmBank chess challenge, Sarvinoz Kurbonboeva of Uzbekistan lived up to her top billing by winning this tournament. Actually, it was a joint tie at the top of the standings with India’s Rohan Vijay Shandilya but a better tie-break ensured that Kurbonboeva received the challenge trophy and the top prize of RM1,000.

Another Uzbek player, grandmaster Dmitry Kayumov, shared the winners’ spotlight by successfully defending his title at the second Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng international seniors open chess championship, winning the top prize of RM5,000.

Kayumov’s victory was more or less expected as he was the only grandmaster in the field and his rating was 100 points above his nearest rival, Filipino international master Luis Chiong. Yet, during the tournament, he reached a crisis point when an unexpected loss in the sixth round to Chiong meant that there were three players tied at the top of the standings.

However, Kayumov never looked back after that loss. He won his remaining three games to clinch the first prize as his rivals’ play began spluttering.

Now that the dust has settled at the Malaysian Chess Festival, attention turns to the Raja Nazrin Shah invitational masters and international open chess championships at the Swiss Garden Hotel & Residences in Kuala Lumpur. The two events will run concurrently from this Sunday until Sept 10.

There are actually two events. The first is the Raja Nazrin Shah invitational masters championship where four veteran grandmasters from Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines and Uzbekistan will be joined by six international masters in a nine-round round-robin tournament. Among the competitors will be Malaysia’s international master, Mas Hafizulhelmi.

The other players in the invitational event are grandmasters Joseph Sanchez (the Philippines), Nguyen Anh Dung (Vietnam), Tahir Vakhidov (Uzbekistan) and Dr Wong Meng Kong (Singapore), and international masters Oliver Barbosa and Richard Bitoon (both from the Philippines), Nguyen Van Huy (Vietnam), Goh Wei Ming (Singapore) and Jahongir Vakhidov (Uzbekistan).

There is also an international open championship at the same time, with half the entries being internationally titled players. Malaysia will again depend on its youth to lead the fight, with 18-year-old national champion Lim Zhou Ren heading the local challenge.

Also expected to play are our under-14 boys’ champion Roshan Ajeet Singh, under-14 girls’ champion Tan Li Ting, under-10 boys’ champion Teh De Juan and under-10 girls’ champion Teh De Zen. I have heard that 85-year-old Datuk Tan Chin Nam may be playing too.

The two events are organised by the Kuala Lumpur Chess Association with sponsorship from the Masterskill Education Group Bhd under its Educating Malaysia Corporate Social Responsibility programme.

FOR the better part of last fortnight, I had been playing in the Malaysia Chess Festival.

At the risk of disclosing my age to the whole world, I want to mention that I was not participating in the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open championship but rather, in the KLK Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng senior open tournament.

These two tournaments, together with the AmBank chess challenge, were the main showcase events of this year’s 12-day festival at the Cititel Mid Valley Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

Full of beans: Iranian children aged 14 and below with the certificates and medals which they won at the Swensen’s rapid age group championship.

All these ended yesterday but there is no respite for the organisers.

It is just one tournament after another, and today sees the festival continue with the one-day Astro Merdeka individual rapid open tournament.

Then tomorrow and on Sunday, the festival ends with the traditional Astro Merdeka team rapid open championship.

Earlier this week, I heard from the organisers that more than 80 teams had registered for the team event, and these were only the early entries.

When the late entries are counted, the number of teams may well go above 100, meaning a possibility of more than 500 people taking part in a chess competition!

By comparison, there were only 70 teams last year.

As for the three showcase tournaments – all individual events – there were 98 participants in the Malaysia open championship, 40 players in the chess challenge tournament, and 29 in the senior open tournament.

The numbers may be down from last year but there was still a very respectable list of visiting grandmasters and international masters.

Sandwiched within the nine rounds of the three events was a spectacularly-run Swensen’s rapid age group championship, a one-day event that managed to attract 385 junior players from within and outside the country.

From experience, I can tell you that managing age group chess events can be quite harrowing for organisers.

The prospect of controlling the younger players, especially those 12 and below, can test the nerves of even the coolest organisers.

Can’t remember how it was like to be a 12-year-old or an eight-year-old?

For one day, these children reminded me that we were all young once.

Like us, they were noisy, boisterous, innocent, excitable, exuberant, impatient and impressionable.

I marvelled at the ease they alternated between being serious and playful.

They were full of energy away from the chess boards but displayed great concentration and determination when seated across the board from their opponents.

Among the 385 players was a group of 35 children from Teheran, Iran, none of them older than 14.

Together with their parents and chess coaches, they came on an eight-day holiday but had also arranged with the festival organisers to take part in the Swensen’s event as part of their holiday itinerary.

At the closing ceremony, they even arranged to appear on stage with the sponsors and organisers just to receive their certificates of participation and for some of them, their winner’s medals.

Looking back, I would think that it was very important to the Iranian parents and coaches that this would be an educational trip, and the children had something to show and remind them that they had, after all, come to Malaysia to play chess.

BEING named as the top seed in any tournament can work two ways: it can inspire the player to win the event or make the player muck up his attempt to justify the ranking.

I observe that at most top chess events in the world, the highest rated player generally justifies his top ranking. Case in point: at the Biel tournament in Switzerland, Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen came through beautifully to win; at the Dortmund tournament in Germany, former world champion Vladimir Kramnik cut a swathe through his opposition to take the first prize; at the British championship in England, grandmaster Michael Adams won the play-off for the title; and at the Lake Sevan tournament in Armenia, grandmaster Baadur Jobava won on tie-break after finishing in joint first place.

Chess whizz: Dariusz Swiercz is the new world junior chess champion.

But for every success in justifying the top seeding, there is also the disappointment. For example, at the Hangzhou women’s grandmaster tournament, woman grandmaster Ju Wenjun won convincingly ahead of the women’s world champion, Hou Yifan; and at the Fide women’s grand prix tournament in Rostov, Russia, grandmaster Koneru Humpy was overshadowed by a brilliant display by Hou.

Just earlier this week, the 50th world junior chess championship ended in Chennai, India. For the open event, top-seeded Maxim Matlakov, a grandmaster from Russia, could not live up to his ranking and after two crucial back-to-back losses, he finished well outside the prizewinners’ list.

After Matlakov dropped out of contention, the front-runners chasing the world junior championship title were reduced to just four players: Polish grandmaster Dariusz Swiercz, two Armenian grandmasters, Robert Hovhannisyan and Samvel Ter-Sahakyan, and an Indian Fide master, Koushik Girish.

Girish dropped out of the picture soon afterwards (but not before he qualified for a grandmaster title norm) and only three front-runners were left. On the back of a series of seven consecutive wins, Hovhannisyan had taken over the lead after the ninth round but Ter-Sahakyan and Swiercz were right behind him.

The pressure was relentless as Ter-Sahakyan and Swiercz kept at Hovhannisyan’s heels for the next two rounds. Then Ter-Sahakyan’s challenge fell apart when he suffered two consecutive losses in his final two games.

With only the final round to be played, Hovhannisyan was left to contend with only Swiercz. At this late stage in the tournament, the Armenian grandmaster held a slim half-point lead over his rival. Swiercz would have to win his final game but it would seem likely to any observer that all Hovhannisyan needed was a draw in the final round to secure the first place.

But chess with all its tie-break possibilities can spring surprises. Hovhannisyan made his draw and Swiercz won his game. Both players were now tied at the top. But surprise, surprise, according to the tie-break system, the draw had actually pulled Hovhannisyan down from the perch, giving him only second place and the silver medal. As a result, Swiercz ended up as the new world junior chess champion despite having trailed in the tournament until the last round was played.

This being the world junior chess championship, Malaysia was represented in this event by the current national champion, Lim Zhuo Ren. Although Lim had been an active player in local tournaments for several years, this event was his first outside the country. (As far as I’m concerned, participating in last year’s Singapore open does not qualify as taking part in a foreign tournament.)

I think the strength of the event surprised him and taught him many lessons. Though he did not create any wave in Chennai, at the very least he played more or less according to his rating expectation. I’m sure that the lessons he brought back from India will be put to good practice at the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open championship which is in progress at the Cititel Mid Valley Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

Speaking of which, today is the second day of the Malaysia Chess Festival of which the Malaysia open is one of the three main showcase events that are running until Aug 25. The other three events are the Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng senior open tournament and the AmBank chess challenge.

All these three events are played daily – do check with the organisers because sometimes there are two rounds in a day and sometimes only one round – but there are two rest days next week on Sunday and Wednesday.

On Sunday, though, the Svensen’s open rapid age group chess tournament will take place at the same venue.

THERE are just five days to go before the start of this year’s Malaysia Chess Festival. Are you ready for it? As for me, I’m preparing to make my way down to Kuala Lumpur soon.

Normally, I would spend two or three days at the festival to soak in the occasion, observe the participants and basically enjoy the fun among the people whom I’ve known for decades.

However, since last year, I have become more involved in the festival as a somewhat reluctant participant.

The heat is on: The playing hall at last year’s Malaysia Chess Festival. The organisers are confident that the venue will be equally packed for this year’s edition of the chess festival.

Yes, I’ve been roped in again to play in the second Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng seniors open tournament. I have to admit that just like last year, I am far from being comfortable. Apart from looking at chess games live on the Internet and doing some brief analysis and commentaries for this chess column, I haven’t sat down with real chess pieces and feel their weight in my hands. Not for quite some time, I haven’t!

So it is with some trepidation that I’m getting myself involved again. And I know that the competition level this year isn’t going to be any easier than the maiden event last year. I took a sneak look at the preliminary list of players and true enough, it looks tough even before the first move is pushed.

Last year’s tournament had 18 participants but so far, I’ve seen 24 names in the players’ list. I am sure that before the event starts on Aug 18, there may be more additions to this number.

One reason for the increasing number is, of course, more players are now aware of the existence of this event. Last year was just the curtain raiser; this year is the real competition.

Another reason is that the organisers have lowered the entry age from 55 to 50, thus enabling more people to make the transition from playing in open events to this senior event.

Although it’s a good idea, the organisers should rein themselves in. Otherwise, if they continue to lower the age limit, it will defeat the idea of holding a senior tournament in the first place.

As for the other two main draws of the Malaysia Chess Festival, the organisers say that they are confident of at least 100 entries for the main event, the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open championship, while 37 entries have been received for the AmBank chess challenge.

There are at least 17 grandmasters in the Malaysia open and this includes the defending champion, Vietnamese grandmaster Cao Sang. Also taking part are two woman grandmasters and nine international masters. The most prominent names among the Malaysians taking part are Mas Hafizulhelmi and Lim Zhuo Ren.

These three main events will be held at the Cititel Mid Valley Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, from Aug 18-25. They will all be played over nine Swiss rounds using a 90-minute plus 30-second increment time control.

Apart from these long time control tournaments, there is the Svensen’s open rapid age group chess tournament on Aug 21, of which more than 200 entries have been received so far, and the Malaysia Chess Festival open blitz tournament on Aug 25

IT did not come as a surprise to many that Russia’s Vladimir Kramnik and Norway’s Magnus Carlsen were convincing winners in the Dortmund Sparkassen invitational chess tournament and annual Biel Chess Festival respectively.

In Dortmund, Germany, Kramnik had been dominant in the first half of the double round-robin tournament and though he could not repeat his feat in the second half, the advantage that he brought forward was enough to see him through.

In the final round, he was even tempted to try his luck against American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Somewhere in the middlegame, he uncorked a brave sacrifice to open up his opponent’s defences around the king.

A win would almost certainly have propelled Kramnik into the elite 2800 club of the live ratings list of which there are currently only three players: Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand and Levon Aronian. But in this case, fortune did not favour the brave. There was always something in the position that enabled Nakamura’s defence to hold. Possibly, the draw could still be salvaged but at this late stage in the game, Kramnik was probably no longer interested to split the point.

Despite the loss, the Russian grandmaster still won the tournament with a big two-point margin over his rivals, the nearest of whom was Vietnamese grandmaster Le Quang Liem. Ruslan Ponomariov, a former Fide world champion, was third.

Meanwhile in Switzerland, the Biel tournament was won by Carlsen. This was also a double round-robin event which saw the players playing one another twice. However, the organisers had adopted a different scoring system that awarded three points for a win, one point for a draw and zero point for a loss, something that we would probably be more familiar with in football competitions.

There are, of course, merits in trying something different and in this case, the organisers were hoping to impress on the players – and the spectators – that drawing two games have less value than a win and a loss. It would call for fighting chess all the way, which was what the organisers achieved at the end.

Carlsen continued to put in an exemplary display in this event, despite showing a vulnerability in the first half when he lost to French grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. However, this only setback did not cause Carlsen any real damage because his closest rival, Alexander Morozevich, was unlucky enough to lose to Fabiano Caruana. The final standings could have been different had Morozevich won that game.

Here is Nakamura’s win against Kramnik from the final round of the Dortmund tournament.

Vladimir Kramnik – Hikaru Nakamura, Dortmund 2011

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Nf3 O-O 6. Be2 e5 7. O-O Nc6 8. d5 Ne7 9. b4 Nh5 10. c5 Nf4 11. a4 f5 12. Bc4 fxe4 13. Nxe4 h6 14. Re1 Bg4 15. Ra3 g5 16. h3 Bh5 17. Bxf4 Rxf4 18. g3 Rf8 19. a5 Kh8 20. Kg2 Rb8 21. Qd2 b6 22. axb6 axb6 23. Nfxg5 (See diagram)

23…hxg5 24. Qxg5 Bg6 25. cxd6 cxd6 26. Ra7 Rc8 27. Rxe7 Rxc4 28. f3 Rc2+ 29. Kg1 Rc8 30. Ra1 Rf7 31. Qxg6 Qxe7 32. Ng5 Kg8 33. Qh7+ Kf8 34. Ne6+ Ke8 35. Qh5 Bf6 36. g4 Qb7 37. Rd1 Qa6 38. Qg6 Ke7 39. g5 Bh8 40. Re1 Qa3 41. Nd4 Qxb4 42. Nf5+ Kf8 43. Rd1 Rc2 44. Nd4 exd4 45. Qxc2 Qc3 46. Qe4 Qe3+ 47. Qxe3 dxe3 48. Kg2 Bc3 49. Kf1 Rxf3+ 50. Ke2 Rxh3 0-1

THERE are just too many world-class chess events which have taken place or are taking place all over the world at the same time. From Ningbo in China to Dortmund in Germany and Biel in Switzerland, my attention is being divided by this surfeit of chess activities.

Would I consider this a problem? Yes, but this is a happy problem. I don’t mind the distraction. It only proves that chess can have a crowded calendar.

So where shall I start? Perhaps, from where I left off last week, with the world team chess championship that ended in Ningbo on Tuesday with Armenia deposing Russia to become the new champion.

Poised to win: Vladimir Kramnik is creating waves at the Dortmund Sparkassen invitational chess tournament.

I thought at first that Russia was going to win this event but the Russians stumbled badly and lost to China and Azerbaijan, and in the final round, suffered the ignominy of losing to India.

Russia’s setback was the opportunity for Armenia to spring into the lead. The Armenian team had played so steadily that they hadn’t lost to any other team yet. At their worst, they drew with Russia, the United States and Azerbaijan.

On Tuesday, Armenia was due to play Ukraine in the final round. A drawn match was all that they needed to clinch the title but the Ukrainians themselves were in the chase. If they could score a crushing result like a 3½-½ win against Armenia, they may even come out tops. Maybe the Ukrainians saw the unlikelihood of this ever happening because soon after the start of the round, their match was quickly drawn.

I believe China was disappointed with this outcome because they were mathematically in contention for the title and they would only need to win by 2½-1½ against Hungary, which they did, to be the champion if Ukraine had won by any score line. The only consolation for the Chinese team was that they actually finished with the same game points as the Armenians, except that on the more important match points, they trailed the new champion.

India, Israel and Egypt found themselves out of their depth. Israel was possibly the biggest disappointment seeing how just a year ago, they had finished third in the Chess Olympiad.

India came into this event as the Asian champion but they soon realized that even finishing in the middle of the table would be a tall order. I thought they could play the role of a spoiler and take surprising points off the main title contenders but the only problem was, they could not until the very last round against Russia when the results did not count any more.

As for Egypt, there is little to be said about this African representative except that they failed totally.

And so we move on to Germany where the former world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, is creating waves at the Dortmund Sparkassen invitational chess tournament. Well, at least he has been in impressive form right until the mid-way point of this event last Monday. By the way, the tournament ends on Sunday so there is still time to see whether Kramnik will carry his advantage right through till the end.

The Dortmund Sparkassen is an elite chess tournament that goes a long way back. However, it was not until 1973 that it was converted into a regular annual event. This year’s edition is a six-player, double round-robin tournament that features Vladimir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura, Ruslan Ponomariov, Le Quang Liem, Anish Giri and local German player Georg Meier.

As mentioned, Kramnik has been showing great form. He couldn’t have been happier. In the first half of the tournament, his victims included Ponomariov, Giri, Meier and Nakamura, and he has dropped only a draw to Le. Even if he eases up on the pedal and draws the rest of his games in the second half, I believe he should coast through easily to win the top prize.

The last tournament on my list today is the annual Biel Chess Festival.

This chess festival has been around for decades. It started as a masters open tournament in 1968; the grandmaster tournament was introduced in 1976, and evolved into one of Europe’s showcase events. Like in Dortmund, this is a double round-robin tournament featuring six very strong players. Their names speak for themselves: Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexei Shirov, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich and Yannick Pelletier.

I would be very surprised if Carlsen does not win the event which will end today. On Tuesday as I was writing this story, Carlsen was leading the field with only Morozevich following hard on his tail. The rest had been left behind.

Caruana, who had won last year’s Biel grandmaster tournament, found himself trailing everyone this time around. A complete reversal of form.

WE’RE in the midst of a mini-Chess Olympiad and it is taking place in Ningbo, China. This is the world team chess championship which started on July 16 and will continue until Tuesday.

Since the first world team chess championship began in 1985, it has always been held every four years but the World Chess Federation changed its regulations and turned it into a biennial event. The last championship was two years ago in Turkey.

In case you are wondering, no, we are ineligible to play in it. Only the best teams in the world can take part, and there are only 10 places available. The foremost criterion for selection into this event is that a team must qualify as their continental champion.

Thus, India came out the winner at the last Asian team championship in Kolkata two years ago and is thus representing Asia in this world team chess championship.

Azerbaijan won the European team championship in 2009 and is playing in Ningbo. Similarly, the United States is the qualifier from America, while Egypt is the representative for Africa.

Apart from these four countries, Russia is playing in the championship as the defending champion, while Ukraine, Israel and Hungary qualified from finishing first, third and fourth respectively from last year’s Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk.

Of course, China as the host country is participating, and Armenia is the World Chess Federation president’s nomination.

Of these 10 countries, Egypt has arguably the weakest line-up. The team is not expected to end up anywhere but in the cellar position. But among the other nine teams, it is a real challenge to predict the winner.

Of course, Russia is still the team to beat with a line-up that comprises Sergey Karyakin, Alexander Grischuk, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Peter Svidler and Nikita Vitiugov. But they can’t be expecting any favour from the other teams. If anything, Azerbaijan and Ukraine will be breathing down hard on the Russians.

Both Armenia and Hungary cannot be discounted from leapfrogging over these top three teams while China, the United States, Israel and India will always be there as spoilers.

But having said all this, the first surprise was sprung in the very first round of the championship by an Egyptian player. International master Samy Shoker had been overwhelmed by playing the Ukrainian grandmaster, Alexander Areshchenko.

At the most critical point in the game, Areshchenko, thinking that the point was already in his pocket, went into auto-pilot mode and relaxed for a second. Shoker had the presence of mind to detect the smallest chance given to him and he seized on it.

The result? Areshchenko came under a mating attack and was unable to save the game. Here is the play:

Alexander Areshchenko (Ukraine) vs Samy Shoker (Egypt)

1. e4 d6 2. d4 Nf6 3. Nc3 g6 4. Be3 c6 5. h3 Nbd7 6. Nf3 Qc7 7. Bd3 e5 (I would have thought that the most logical move was to fianchetto the bishop and go for castling quickly.) 8. Qd2 exd4 (Again, 8. … Bg7 was called for.) 9. Nxd4 Bg7 10. Bh6 Bxh6 (Castle! Black should be castling here. Now, his king is caught in the centre.) 11. Qxh6 b5 (Black plays like a patzer. This move can be refuted immediately with 12. Bxb5 cxb5 13. Ndxb5 … and Black is in deep trouble.) 12. O-O-O b4 13. Nb1 Bb7 14. Nd2 Qb6 15. N4b3 Ba6 16. Bxa6 Qxa6 17. Kb1 c5 18. Nf3 c4 (At least Black has the presence of mind not to tempt fate further by capturing the e-pawn.) 19. Nc1 Ne5 20. Rd4 c3 21. Rhd1 cxb2 22. Nb3 Nc4 23. e5 (See diagram. White was already feeling so comfortable that he thought the game would play by itself. He totally overlooked Black’s threats or otherwise he would have played 23. Qg7. Just this one move, 23. e5, and the fortunes in this game turned around.) Rc8 24. exf6 Na3+ 25. Kxb2 Rxc2+ 26. Ka1 Nc4 27. Re4+ Kd8 28. Nc1 Qa3 0-1 (Checkmate is next.)

AT THE last minute on Sunday, I decided to take a short drive down from Penang to look in at the fifth and final leg of the Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng chess grand prix tournament at the Syuen Hotel in Ipoh.

I was very encouraged by what I saw. When I entered the tournament hall, I could see that the Perak International Chess Association (PICA) had a good thing going for them. The hall was full, with 213 people playing chess.

Players of all ages had come to Ipoh from all over Perak and even the nearby states. As far as I could tell, there were players from Selangor and Penang but the organisers were quick to stress that there were busloads of players from areas like Bagan Serai, Slim River, Grik, Kampar, Ayer Tawar, Kuala Kangsar and Sungai Siput.

In fact, despite the closing date for entries being announced much earlier, Pica officials suddenly found an unprecedented number of unregistered players knocking at the door on Sunday morning.

They had to adjust their entries quickly and would have gladly accepted all who turned up at the last minute if not for the fact that they had filled up the tournament hall and had run out of chess equipment. I was told that possibly some 30 to 40 players were turned away.

Because of the large number of players, the organisers also made a quick decision to increase the number of rounds to eight and, at the same time, reduce the time control for each round.

Of course, some of the more serious participants may say that these factors made it uncondu-cive to compete seriously (there was a lot of prize monies involved) but, I was thinking to myself, who cares?

It was a great carnival atmosphere and I could see that the majority of the players were enjoying themselves tremendously. The noise level was high and impossible to shut out, but, again, who cares?

Naturally, the top boards got the most attention. They were the games that were usually among the last to finish, so it gave the other players a great opportunity to mill around and watch the better players.

This is the second year of the grand prix, which started last year. According to Pica president Chan Swee Loon, the association received RM25,000 from Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd (KLK) this year to run the five legs in various towns in Perak.

The series began with the Taiping leg in April and then proceeded to Bagan Serai, Slim River, Kampar and finally, Ipoh. Chan said that the grand prix circuit had drummed up a lot of interest in the towns where chess is not normally played. Next year’s grand prix circuit, he added, would probably be increased to six legs and start earlier in January.

At the closing ceremony on Sunday, the mayor of Ipoh, Datuk Roshidi Hashim, enthused about the game and paid a glowing tribute to the late Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng, founder of KLK. Then he sprang a surprise by pledging that the Ipoh City Council would contribute RM10,000 to next year’s grand prix circuit in the state.

For the record, the eight winners of the grand prix were Fong Yit San, Muhammad Nabil Azman Hisham, Fong Yit Ho, Ahmad Jamal Husni Jamaluddin, Jason Teh Chee Ying, Azman Hisham Che Doi, Amirul Rahimi Shamsuddin and Noor Ahmad Fazilah

For example, isn’t India’s Viswanathan Anand the world chess champion today? Wasn’t China’s Xie Jun the first Asian to become the women’s world champion? And isn’t Le Quang Liem the first Vietnamese player to break into that elite group of players with a rarified 2700+ chess rating?

In fact, there are so many other talents that have emerged from these four countries.

Wesley So from the Philippines is currently that country’s top ranked player and he is only 17; Hou Yifan from China is currently the women’s world chess champion and she is also 17; Parimarjan Negi, 18, is considered to be a chess prodigy from India. I should also add that Le Quang Liem is 20.

All very talented junior players. When we consider the likes of Norway’s Magnus Carlsen who is approaching his 21st birthday, Italian-American Fabiano Caruana who is 19 and currently the top junior player in the world, and 17-year-old Nepalese-Russian (but now Dutch) Anish Giri, we find that the world is practically littered with junior players who continue to shake up the older chess masters in today’s chess world.

Young champ: Fabiano Caruana, 19, is the current top junior chess player in the world.

Recently, the Delhi Chess Association and the Airport Authority of India joined hands to organise the AAI international grandmasters chess tournament in New Delhi, India, and they invited four of these young chess talents to participate.

Joining Caruana, So, Negi and Hou in this double round-robin tournament were two other players. One was the Czech Republic’s Viktor Laznicka, who at 23 wasn’t that much older than the four, and India’s second-best player Krishnan Sasikiran, who at 30 found himself the oldest player in the tourmanent.

The event was a romp for Caruana who justified his top seeding. He led after the third round and never allowed any of his rivals to get near enough to him. By the end of the eighth round, he was the only unbeaten player and he enjoyed a 1½-point advantage over his closest rival, Sasikiran.

But disaster struck for Caruana in the ninth round. According to him, he had blundered in a position which would have led to a draw. As a result, Sasikiran crept to narrow the gap on him to only a single point. However, Caruana’s first place in this tournament was never in any real danger as a draw in the 10th round was enough to seal his top prize.

Sasikiran came second in the tournament, followed by Laznicka in third place. And what of the other three teenagers in this event? Well, by their own admission, they could have played better but actually, they finished according to expectations. So and Negi were expected to finish in fourth and fifth positions respectively, which they did.

Hou was the weakest player in the field and finished last. In fact, if not for a much steadier performance in the second half of the tournament, she would have ended up with even fewer points. The first half of the tournament was a disaster as she lost her first four games.

On the basis of her play in this tournament, I think she is going to have her hands full later this year when she defends her women’s world championship title against the official challenger, Koneru Humpy. It will be back to the training board for her as her coaches try to build up her game before the big match.

This week, I’m featuring a critical game between the tournament winner and the current chess champion of India. I’m referring, of course, to Negi who had won the Indian national championship in December last year. In this marathon game which went to 98 moves, Caruana sacrificed his queen and in return, got back three pieces as compensation. At first, Caruana’s advantage was slight but his pieces coordinated better and he gradually built up to a winning position. However, he still had to tread carefully to prevent Negi’s queen from continually checking him as he pushed his pawn towards queening. Eventually, though, both players managed to convert their pawns into new queens but where Caruana was concerned, his position was already winning.

Fabiano Caruana – Parimarjan Negi, Round 6

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 e6 7. f3 b5 8. Qd2 Nbd7 9. g4 h6 10. O-O-O Ne5 11. Qf2 b4 12. Nce2 Nc4 13. Ng3 Qc7 14. Bxc4 Qxc4 15. Kb1 g6 16. h4 e5 17. Nb3 Be6 18. h5 g5 19. Nf5 Bxf5 20. gxf5 Rc8 21. Rd3 Be7 22. a3 d5 23. exd5 Nxd5 24. Rhd1 Nf6 25. axb4 Qxb4 26. Bd2 Qb8 27. Bc3 O-O 28. Qe3 Rfe8 29. Bxe5 b5 30. f4 Qc4 31. Qd2 Ne4 32. Qg2 Qc6 33. Rd5 Nf6 34. fxg5 hxg5 35. Qxg5+ Kh7 36. Bxf6 Qxc2+ 37. Ka2 Rg8 38. Qxg8+ Rxg8 39. Bxe7 Rg3 40. Na5 Rg2 41. Ba3 Rf2 42. Nb3 Rf3 43. Nc5 Qc4+ 44. Kb1 Rf1 45. Rd4 Qe2 46. Rxf1 Qxf1+ 47. Ka2 Qxf5 48. Rd6 Qf1 49. Nxa6 f5 50. Nb4 Qc4+ 51. b3 Qe2+ 52. Bb2 Qxh5 53. Nd5 Qf3 54. Rd7+ Kg6 55. Ne7+ Kh6 56. Rd6+ Kh7 57. Rd8 Kh6 58. Rd6+ Kh7 59. Rd4 Kh6 60. Nd5 Qe2 61. b4 Kg5 62. Kb3 Qf1 63. Nf4 Qa6 64. Bc1 Kf6 65. Bd2 Qf1 66. Rd5 Qb1+ 67. Kc4 Qa2+ 68. Kb5 Qa8 69. Bc3+ Kg5 70. Be5 Qa7 71. Ne6+ Kg4 72. Rd4+ Kf3 73. Nc5 Ke3 74. Kc6 Qf7 75. Rd3+ Ke2 76. Rd5 Qe8+ 77. Kb6 Qf7 78. Rd6 Kf3 79. b5 Qe8 80. Re6 Qc8 81. Bc7 Qa8 82. Rd6 Ke2 83. Ne6 Qe4 84. Nd4+ Kf2 85. Nc6 Qc2 86. Kb7 Qb3 87. b6 f4 88. Kc8 Qh3+ 89. Rd7 f3 90. b7 Kg2 91. b8=Q f2 92. Qb2 Kh1 93. Ne5 f1=Q 94. Kb8 Qh8+ 95. Rd8 Qhf6 96. Qb7+ Kg1 97. Rg8+ Kh2 98. Ng4+ 1-0