IM Mok is new Malaysian number 1!

In the latest FIDE rating list published in October 2012, IM Mok Tze Meng has taken over the top from IM Mas Hafizulhelmi. Mok has 2373 while Mas has dropped to 2355. Thus IM Mok takes over the Malaysian number one tag from Mas who has hogged this spot for a number of years.

The Istanbul Chess Olympiad provided many points for our players. Mok collected 19 points while Yee Weng increased his rating by 13 points to 2300. The biggest gain was by Lim Zhuo Ren (61 points) catapulting him into the top ten. Nicholas Chan is not on the active list as he has not played any rated events in the past year. Wong Zi Jing is still the highest rated  at 2410 but he has not played any rated events for a number of years already.

The top  thirty FIDE rated players are shown below.

Exciting game from World Mind Games qualifier

Here is a very exciting game from last night's qualifier featuring the eventual winner and GM Maxim Dlugy. Dlugy is lost for a long time until...well see the ending of the game!

[Event "8. SAMG Qualifier 20.10."]
[Site "playchess.com #650189"]
[Date "2012.10.20"]
[Round "8"]
[White "Dlugy"]
[Black "Feketecsillag"]

[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[ECO "A65"]
[WhiteElo "2775"]
[BlackElo "2824"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. f3 O-O 6. Be3 c5

This is a standard pawn sacrifice in this line. Theory says that 7. dxc5 dxc5 8. Qxd8 Rxd8 9. Bxc5 Nc6 gives black sufficient compensation.

Last qualifier for World Mind Games

The last and final qualifier for the World Mind Games started tonight at 10:00 PM. The event finished some 2.5 hours later. The top 15 joins the other qualifiers for the Candidates Tournament which will start on October 27.

I was quite lucky to make the top 15 with 6.5 points. Both Singapore's IM Goh Wei Ming (6 points) and IM Mok Tze Meng (5 points) did not qualify. I felt this was one of the toughest qualifiers with several GMs and IMs taking part most likely since this was the last chance to qualify.

My highlight was beating GM Maxim Dlugy in the second round when he overlooked an in-between move which lost material. I lost two games, one to Wei Ming and drew a winning game against Mok.

I was woefully lacking in the openings but made up for it with some tactical play, honed after playing thousands of bullet chess!


You can read Junior Tay's account of the other qualifiers here and here and here.

More malware

Another virus is making the rounds, this time it is the file recovery virus. A friend came to me for help, the same one here.

This is quite a particular nasty piece of malware. It took me 2-3 hours to completely erase it. While carrying out the removal from his PC, one of my own PCs got infected! Guess what I was doing just before I got hit? I went to Andrew's Malaysian Chess Blogs site (he informed me he had removed the malware). From there I went to Samsudin's site and Gilocatur's site. Pretty sure I got the virus from one of these three blogs.

So right now I am doing the malware removal on my own machine. Two machines in one night :)

Readers be careful now, you do not want this on your machine  :)

Insofar September Winners

Insofar September was held yesterday , Sunday 30th September, and won by Zaidan Zulkipli. Sumant tied with 5.5 points but came second on tie-break. Full results below.

I was planning to take part but a bit of flu kept me from waking up!.