Amier Hamzah In London Chess Classic 2009

Another Malaysian chess player has been spotted over the internet, this time it is the chess prodigy, Amier Hamzah, who is currently in London with his dad and apparently has been entered into the London Chess Classic 2009 Open Category. The tournament is the same one, where Magnus Carlsen is also participating, tho’ in a different category.

Below is the current performance of Amier Hamzah, who had just won his first game in the fourth round against a higher rated player (2072) from Italy. Amier played black.

To catch more of Amier Hamzah’s exploits in the London Chess Classic 2009, please visit the official website: http://www.londonchessclassic.com/festival_events/fide_rated_open.htm

(posted by firey_rook; http://fireyrook.blogspot.com)

Pertandingan Catur Rapid Di Alor Star, Kedah, 19 Disember 2009

Berita Pertandingan Catur Rapid Di Alor Setar, Kedah dari Syed Chess (http://syedchess.blogspot.com/) yang akan di adakan pada 19 Disember 2009 nanti.

 

(source: Syed Iskandar Shah Syed Hussin, http://syedchess.blogspot.com/)

(posted by firey_rook; http://fireyrook.blogspot.com)

Singapore Chess Festival 2009 – Update 1

Here are some results of round 1 based on chess-results.com updates for the first day of tournament play at the Singapore Chess Festival, 9th-15th December 2009.

In the open category, IM Mas won, IM Yee Weng drew and NM Edward Lee Kim Han lost his game in their round 1 games as shown in Table 1 below.

 Table 1. Round 1 Results – Open Category

In the challengers section, Olivia Madhavan won her game and so did Yat Guo Jie and Ismail Ahmad.

Table 2. Round 1 Results – Challenger Category.

Others – Yat Guo Jie won his first round game against a Singaporean. Albert Ang Keliang, Tang Hang Sing and Aron Teh Wu Wen also won their first round game.

Table 3. Challengers Section – Round 1 Results (bottom half).

In the Under 20/Under 16 category, the biggest casualty was the loss of Yeap Eng Chiam in his first round game. Ong Way Justin and Tan Jun Feng won their respective games as shown in Table 4 below.

Table 4. Round 1 Results  – Under 20/Under 16 Category.

In the Under 12 category, Tan Wei Hao got a winning start by beating a Singaporean in his first round game.

 Table 5. Round 1 Results – Under 12.

(source: chess-results.com)

(posted by firey_rook; http://fireyrook.blogspot.com)

IM Mas and IM Yee Weng In Singapore

Both IM Mas and IM Yee Weng were spotted on the internet at Chess-results.com to have entered the Singapore International Chess Festival 2009 – Open category from 9th-15th December 2009.

Both Malaysian players will be just fresh from Vietnam open tournament which concluded last Tuesday, 8th December 2009. This will be a back-to-back chess tournament for Malaysia’s top chess players, allowing further opportunity for them to excel in their chosen sport of chess.

Below are some details of the tournament schedule for our players in Singapore:-

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL CHESS FESTIVAL 2009

- Commonwealth Open Championship,
Commonwealth Age-Group Championships & Challengers Tournaments

Tournament Schedule

9^th December : Arrival of Players
9^th December : Technical Meeting – 2000 hour
(players not present shall not be paired for Round 1)
10^th December : Round 1 – 0900 hour;
Round 2 – 1600 hour
11^th December : Round 3 – 0900 hour;
Round 4 – 1600 hour
12^th December : Round 5 – 0900 hour;
Round 6 – 1600 hour
13^th December : Round 7 – 0900 hour;
Round 8 – 1600 hour
14^th December : Round 9 – 0900 hour;
Closing Ceremony – 1500 hour
15^th December : Departure of Players

Besides, IM Mas Hafizulhelmi and IM Lim Yee Weng, the name of Edward Lee Kim Han, Malaysia, also appears on the chess-results.com. All three players will be participating in the Singapore Open Chess category.

For the challenger’s group, some familiar names are Ismail Ahmad, Yat Guo Jie (my DATCC team-mate), both from Malaysia.  From Malaysia, last count was seven players all. But this is just for the challengers’ group.

For the age-group bracket, some familiar names from Malaysia are in the list. In the Under-20 /Under-16 age bracket, ten names are listed from Malaysia. One of them is Justin Ong Way and another, my DATCC team-mate, Tan Jun Feng. While in the under-12, there are about nine players listed from Malaysia. Tan Wei Hao, (1870) is notable as he played in the Individual DATCC Fide-rated Weekender in November 2009 recently and also fresh from Jakarta, Indonesia, held in early November 2009.

All in all, quite a big crowd of twenty-two Malaysian players are participating in Singapore from 9th-14th December 2009. Best of luck to our Malaysian players!

(source: chess-results.com)

(posted by firey_rook; http://fireyrook.blogspot.com)

Carlsen beats Kramnik In Round 1 In London Chess Classic 2009

Some news from the London Chess Classic 2009 tournament, currently going-on in England courtesy of Susan Polgar’s blog on chess.

Picture 1. Kramnik – Carlsen in London Chess Classic 2009 (courtesy: Susan Polgar)

Carlsen dominated Nanjing. Kramnik dominated Tal Memorial. They faced each other in the first round of the London Chess Classic. Carlsen surprised Kramnik with 1. c4. His play was steady through out the game and scored a full point to lead this prestigious event.
Carlsen, M (2801) - Kramnik, V (2772) [A29]
London Chess Classic (1), 08.12.2009
1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e5 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.g3 d5 5.cxd5 Nxd5 6.Bg2 Nb6 7.0–0 Be7 8.a3 0–0 9.b4 Be6 10.Rb1 f6 11.d3 a5 12.b5 Nd4 13.Nd2 Qc8 14.e3 Nf5 15.Qc2 Rd8 16.Bb2 a4 17.Rfc1 Nd6 18.Nde4 Ne8 19.Qe2 Bf8 20.f4 exf4 21.gxf4 Qd7 22.d4 c6 23.Nc5 Bxc5 24.dxc5 Nc4 25.Rd1 Qc7 26.Bc1 Na5 27.bxc6 bxc6 28.Nxa4 Rxd1+ 29.Qxd1 Rd8 30.Qc2 Qf7 31.Nc3 Qh5 32.Ne2 Bf5 33.e4 Bg4 34.Ng3 Qf7 35.Bf1 Be6 36.Qc3 Ra8 37.Rb4 Qd7 38.f5 Bf7 39.Bf4 Qd1 40.Kf2 Nb3 41.Be2 Qb1 42.Bc4 Rxa3 43.Ne2 White wins 1–0

(source: Susan Polgar’s blog on chess : http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2009/12/carlsen-1-0-kramnik-in-london.html)

Team AU Extends Their Lead In Chess League

At the DATCC, both Team AU and Caviaga won their matches 4-0 in the fifth round of the 2nd DATCC Chess League 2009 played last night, 8th December 2009.
Price Waterhouse in third place won against EON Bank Berhad. Surprisingly EON’s first board, Nor Ilhamuddin lost to Husain Hazril of Price Waterhouse. Nusa Mahkota also won their match with the new addition of Muhd Izz Saifudin who played on fourth board. They won 3.5:0.5 against 17 Chess Club.
Storm Warriors played steadily against Tan & Tan winning two board games and drawing the other two giving a convincing 3-1 win. Even Dato' Tan Chin Nam, Malaysia's chess supremo, played on board 4 winning a half-point for Tan & Tan. A few of Storm Warriors’ players are just fresh from playing the GACC International Inter-Varsity Chess Open 2009 last week.
Here are the official cross-table after the fifth round of plays and official scores from En. Abdul Hamid Majid, the arbiter of the event, by email.
   
  Picture 1. Cross-table After Round 5 (re-edited on 10 Dec 2009)
2nd DATCC
Round 5 (Official Full Results)
4.1 10 Nusa Mahkota 3½ - ½ 7 17 Chess Club
1 Kamalarifin Wahiduddin 2119 ½ : ½ Kamaluddin Yusof 2177
2 Rizal Ahmad Kamal 1995 1 : 0 Mat Zaki Yeop 1650
3 Sidi Rusdi 0 1 : 0 Salleh Akmal 0
4 Izz Saifuddin 0 1 : 0 Ahayat Izuddin 0
4.2 8 Caviaga 4 - 0 6 DATCC
1 Che Hassan Abdullah 2109 1 : 0 Shamsuddin Sabri 0
2 Yeap Eng Chiam 2118 1 : 0 Haslindah Ruslan 1705
3 Nik Nik Ahmad Farouqi 2092 1 : 0 Yat Guo Jie 0
4 Soh Gerald Han Loong 2088 1 : 0 Varient 0
4.3 9 Team AU 4 - 0 5 X - Factor
1 Fm Ooi Chern Ee 2357 1 : 0 Fm Tze-Meng Mok 2389
2 Zakaria Mohd Fairin 2201 1 : 0 Kumar Sri Shiva 0
3 Tham Tick Hong Jax 2074 1 : 0 Parimanan Paul 0
4 Khandhar Kaushal 1975 1 : 0 Lim Teng Soon 1882
4.4 1 Pricewaterhouse 3 - 1 4 EON Bank Berhad
1 Husain Hazril 0 1 : 0 Nor Ilhamuddin Shaik Ali 2044
2 Ong Thian Loon 0 ½ : ½ Abdul Aziz Abdul Shukor 2012
3 Cheok Fung Cheah 1994 ½ : ½ Tan Chee Hock 0
4 Yaw Chong Chew 2009 1 : 0 Sreenivasan Sri Raman S 0
4.5 2 Tan & Tan 1 - 3 3 Storm Warriors
1 Ng Bernard 1933 ½ : ½ Lee Boon Why 0
2 R. Subramaniam 0 0 : 1 Chin Kenneth Choong Wee 0
3 Chan Mun Fye 0 0 : 1 Mohamad Radzi Ahmad Firdaus 0
4 Dato' Tan Chin Nam 0 ½ : ½ Joon Yi Koh 0

(source: En. Abdul Hamid Majid, the arbiter of the event)
(posted and re-edited by firey_rook; http://fireyrook.blogspot.com)

IM Mas and IM Yee Weng Draws In 9th Round, Vietnam

Both our Malaysian chess players ended up with drawing their last 9th round games in the 2nd Dragon Capitol Vietnam Chess Open 2009 being held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from 2-9th December 2009.

This means IM Mas ended up in tenth position with 5.5 points from 9 rounds with one draw against one GM, while IM Lim Yee Weng in 15th position with 5.0 points.

Table 1. Final Ranking for the top 27 players of the 2nd Dragon Capital Vietnam Chess Open 2009. (source: chess-results.com)

The top two seeds, GM Le Quang Liem (Vietnam) and GM Dao Thien Hai (Vietnam) maintained their 1-2 positions with 8.0 and 6.0 points overall respectively.

Table 2. Overall Game statistics for the nine round, 2nd Dragon Capital Vietnam Chess Open 2009.

In terms of winning, players with the white have a higher chance of winning their games as the game stats show as in Table 2 above, 72 games white won out of a total of 171 games or 42 percentage chance of winning. While black won 40 out of 171 games or 23.3 percentage chance of winning and the remainder of 59 games or 34.5 percent were drawn. As always, white has first mover advantage and in chess that is an important tempo advantage.

(posted by firey_rook; http://fireyrook.blogspot.com)