GilaChess Thoughts
Local player’s benefitted?
Catching up on chess news, I re-read Quah Seng Sun’s article on Malaysian chess at the crossroads:-
Will we see another Merdeka chess festival of the same level as this year’s? Will there be another Malaysia open chess championship that can match the pulling power of the Arthur Tan memorial? Do our local players benefit from [...]
Hibernation mode
Not much local chess activities until after Hari Raya so this blog will be ‘resting’ for a while.
Kosteniuk World Women Champion 2008
This was the first time I watched a chess game live (on PlayChess.com) and it was a liitle disappointing as I was rooting for Hou Yifan. Anyway the general opinion is that she will be Women Champion eventually (hopefully next year).
Name
Rating
G1
G2
G3
G4
Total Points
Kosteniuk, Alexsandra
2510
1
½
½
½
2.5
Hou, Yifan
2557
0
½
½
½
1.5
Related :-
Chessbase report
Chessdom report
Nice Wooden Chess sets
Top 6 boards at the 4th Pichay cup are using DGT chess sets which are nice wooden sets. On lower boards they use PVC boards but the chess pieces are still wooden sets. I saw some wooden chess sets in the supermarket and the price is pretty cheap. Wish I had time to shop [...]
MP3 songs
Minyak Cap Kapak?
Seen at one of the tables at PGMA. At least 2 Chinese players have it on their table while playing. I guess it’s used to ‘enhance’ alertness.
Li Chao
It’s easy to know when Li Chao is winning a game. He’ll put his hands in his pocket and walk around the tournament hall. The less time he spends on the board, the better the indication that the game is in his favour
Where does the money come from?
One thing I regret during DATMO (again!) is not working harder to find the opportunity to talk or interview the players particularly the Chinese players. WGM Zhang Jilin told me last year alone she travelled to about 70 countries playing chess!
It’s amazing that an above average player like Zhang Jilin (ELO 2300+) can [...]
A vacuum that needs to be filled
This is just my personal opinion and not anything official.
With the end DATMO ended, there is a big vacuum in the Malaysian Chess calendar. Nature abhors a vacuum and I’m sure some other new tournament that will fill in this gap. This tournament, perhaps not on the scale of DATMO, but an international Open [...]
Chinese School of Chess secret
From one of my talks with a Chinese player who quotes that many of the top chess juniors are fully focused on chess and if they do not do well in it they will not have any other job or profession to fall back on. That is one of the fears of young kids [...]
Mediocre Eh?
My heart skipped a beat when I saw GilaChess logo on Peter Long’s latest blog post. Knowing Peter most of his comments would not be complementary. In the end it was about Malaysian chess and how mediocrity was celebrated. Hmmm.. I have to agree on him that Malaysian chess at this moment is mediocre. But [...]
Malaysian Chess Heroes
For once I have to agree with ‘Malaysian’. FM Lim Yee Weng and IM Mas Hafizulhelmi’s valiant efforts in chess is a good example to Malaysian chess players. Both have come close to obtaining the GM norm.That in itself is must be inspirational to many Malaysians.
Both have made sacrifices in their work to strive and [...]
DATMO over or is it?
Dato Arthun Tan Malaysian Open is over. It has reached the 5 editions promised by Dato Tan. It is indeed sad to think there will be no more international tournaments of this magnitude in Malaysia for next year.
I was hoping that in Dato speech that new sponsors have already been found and would take over [...]
Clarification on Scoresheet dispute
Back to Jax Tham’s resignation to protest the dispute on his opponent not recording.
I got it wrong. Actually Jax’s opponent totally did not record a single move till the end when time trouble was looming. It was only then, Jax noticed his opponent scoresheet was blank!
Some say the correct thing to do was to stop [...]
Virus woes
My notebook is infected with viruses after sharing USB thumbdrives. No more sharing untrusted USB drives
