Kasugi!

The much anticipated KASUGI team event concluded successfully yesterday. Congratulations to the sponsors and organizer for a great tournament. The attractive prize funds attracted teams from Philippines. Brunei and Indonesia and were jointly represented in a single team which placed second. Champion went to the Philippines team with the imposing name of Apocalypse-Manila.



There are plenty of reports and pictures here and  here. Najib has even more pictures on Facebook. So I'm just going to give my impressions and my team performance.

Impressions

The event was held at the Cititel Express and is not the best place for such a tournament. The total number of teams , I estimate at 70+ for both the Open and Juniors. Together with officials, parents and the players themselves, the number of people in the halls should be in the vicinity of 350. Over-crowding was inevitable.

There were no suitable eateries in the nearby areas as far as I could tell. The small cafe in the hotel could not possibly accomodate so many. The organizers provided lunch boxes for all participants which was most welcome. Unfortunately, many of those who partook of the free lunch complained of upset stomachs. This is a most dangerous position to be in when playing a tournament game.  Some solved it by offering draws and heading off to the packed toilet.

Rapid rules

In this rapid play format and with so many games going on each round, there are going to be some interesting moments. I witnessed two incidents where a player complained that his opponent knocked over the pieces in the time scramble. The correct etiquette is to replace the fallen pieces before you press the clock. If you opponent does not do that, then you can call the arbiter to lodge a complaint. Some expected the arbiter to do something drastic (I do not know what) but the correct decision by the arbiter is to issue a warning and observe the game continuation. If the player makes the same infraction, then a more stern action such as deducting the remaining time - but normally this might mean that the player would lose on time or left with too little time, so the opponent's time will be increased instead. No situation should occur where deducting a player's remaining make him lose on time.

The other case is claiming a draw. There is a FIDE article 10.2 which governs rapid play. Note that rapid play or quick play as it is commonly referred to, encompasses those time control where there is no time increment.

10.2 If the player, having the move, has less than two minutes left on his clock, he may claim a draw before his flag falls. He shall summon the arbiter and may stop the clocks.

Note the word in bold.  The arbiter can decide if the game is drawn or reject the claim or postpone his decision. He may award the opponent an extra two minutes and allow the game to continue. This will be very strange to those not familiar with the rules. By claiming a draw you may be giving your opponent extra time! But not the word "may". The only situation where extra time is awarded is if he does not have enough time to win. Sounds even stranger, but that is the rule.

In the last round, Yeoh Li Tian claimed a draw where he had Q+B+Ps versus Q+Ps. The opponent was just giving checks. Before the arbiter could intervene, the opponent agreed to the draw. In my opinion, the correct action would be no time award, continue the game and if opponent shows no way of improving his position or winning, than declare a draw.

Now here is an interesting situation to think about. Suppose you are the arbiter in Li Tian's scenario, and  orders the game to continue. Suddenly a few moves later, the opponent blunders into a mate. Should the game be won for Li Tian or you (the arbiter) should step in and declare it a draw?  You can post your  in the comments section.

Team performance

Now for my team performance. We won the 2nd best Malaysian Team. The best Malaysian team  went to Nicholas Chan's team , Tesla Chess. Nicholas has a habit of winning this prize (when he is not winning the Open prizes) and I must find out the secret from him one day :)

It was a good outing for us as we were always playing on the top tables (except for Round two).
I had 6/8 , losing two key games. Roshan was quite disappointed with only 3.5/8 while Liew Ken Yew posted 2.5/8, losing all his last four games. I sort of sympathise with Ken Yew. In this team, I was figuratively throwing him into a sea of sharks, so I was satisfied with his final score.

Li Tian saved the team with the best performance scoring seven straight wins and a draw in the last round as mentioned above, for 7.5/8. This is not the best overall performance as both Pitra Andika and IM Orlando Nolte won all their games.

I thought it will be interesting to check the results of the Malaysian Olympiad team members.

Yeoh Li Tian 7.5/8
IM Mok Tze Meng 6.5/8
NM Lim Zhuo Ren 6.5/8
IM Jimmy Liew  6/8

Not too shabby, me thinks.

I'll be showing some of my interesting games in the next post so keep an eye out for that.