Interesting facts on the Amber tournament

- The tournament is sponsored by Joop van Oosterom. It is named after his daughter Amber Melody. Oosterom himself is a world champion in correspondence chess.

- van Oosterom is a billionaire and when you have so much money that you do not know what to do with, what better than to finance a tournament where the best players in the world will compete with each other for the best prizes and the best playing conditions ever?

- This is the 19th edition of the Amber Rapid and Blindfold Chess Tournament

- The players play two blindfold games and two rapid games. Actually they do not play blindfolded but there is computer screen with a blank chessboard where they enter their moves.

- Vladimir Kramnik has won this tournament six times either clear or shared first. When he did not win, he shared second.

- Kramnik liked blindfold so much, he actually considered asking the organizers to allow him to play the rapid games blindfold as well (!).

- Ponomariov and Gashimov had never played blindfold before. Both won their first blindfold game.

- Carlsen opened his first blindfold game with Ivanchuk with 1. a3 (he lost when he blundered a piece)

- Grischuk is well known for getting into time trouble in all his games. He managed to beat Kramnik in 43 moves in their first blindfold game, his last 25 moves were all made in time trouble!

The 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid starts!

The 19th Amber Blindfold and Rapid starts today at Palais de la Mediterranée, in Nice, France.

This year's field is as strong as ever, and includes (in rating order): Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Alexander Grischuk (Russia - a late replacement for Alexander Morozevich), Peter Svidler (Russia), Boris Gelfand (Israel), Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine), Sergey Karjakin (Russia), Leinier Dominguez (Cuba), and Jan Smeets (The Netherlands).

If only Anand and Topalov were in this. But those two will be in deep preparations for their forthcoming World Championship match

The blindford sessions have started, refresh your browser to see latest moves



Dominguez (2713) - Gashimov (2740) [A32]
19th Amber Blindfold&Rapid *Blindfold* Nice/France (1.3), 2010
[Robot 3]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 c5 4.Nf3 cxd4 5.Nxd4 Bb4+ 6.Bd2 Be7 7.Bg2 Nc6 8.Bf4 0-0 9.Nc3 e5 10.Nxc6 bxc6 11.Bxe5 Qa5 12.Bd6 Bxd6 13.Qxd6 Ba6 14.Qd4 Rab8 15.0-0 c5 16.Qd2 Bxc4 17.Rfd1 Be6 18.b3 Rfc8 19.Nd5 Qxd2 20.Rxd2 Kf8 21.Rc1 Nxd5 22.Bxd5 Ke7 23.Rc4 Rb4 24.Rxb4 cxb4 25.Bxe6 fxe6 26.f4 d5 27.Kf2 Rc3 28.e3 Kf6 29.Kf3 h6 30.h3 a5 31.Kf2 g5 32.Kf3 Kf5 33.Kf2 g4 34.hxg4+ Kxg4 35.Re2 h5 36.Kg2 Kf5 37.Kf3 d4 38.Re1 e5 39.fxe5 Kxe5 40.Kf2 Rc2+ 41.Kf3 d3 42.Rh1 Rxa2 43.Rxh5+ Ke6 44.e4 a4 45.bxa4 b3 46.Rh1 b2 47.Rb1 d2 48.Ke2 Ra1 0-1

Ponomariov (2737) - Gelfand (2750)
19th Amber Blindfold&Rapid *Blindfold* Nice/France (1.1), 2010
[Robot 3]

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.e3 Nf6 4.Bd3 Bg4 5.Ne2 e6 6.Qb3 Qc7 7.Ng3 Nh5 8.Nc3 Nd7 9.Bd2 Nb6 10.c5 Nd7 11.e4 Nxg3 12.hxg3 dxe4 13.Nxe4 Bf5 14.Bf4 e5 15.Ng5 Nxc5 16.dxc5 Bxd3 17.0-0-0 0-0-0 18.Nxf7 Rd5 19.Rxd3 Qxf7 20.Rxd5 cxd5 21.Bxe5 Bxc5 22.f4 b6 23.Qc2 Kb7 24.Rxh7 Rg8 25.Kb1 a5 26.a3 d4 27.Qe4+ Ka7 28.Qd3 Qb7 29.Ka2 Qd5+ 30.Qb3 Rd8 31.Qxd5 Rxd5 32.Rxg7+ Ka6 33.Rh7 d3 34.Rh1 Bf2 35.g4 d2 36.Rd1 Be3 37.g3 Bf2 38.g5 Bxg3 39.g6 Rd8 40. g7 a4 41. Rxd2 1-0




Grischuk (2756) - Kramnik (2790)
19th Amber Blindfold&Rapid *Blindfold* Nice/France (1.2), 2010
[Robot 3]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 Bb4 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5 Nbd7 7.Qc2 0-0 8.a3 Bxc3+ 9.Qxc3 h6 10.Bh4 c5 11.Nd2 c4 12.g4 b5 13.Bg2 Nb6 14.h3 Re8 15.e3 a5 16.0-0 Qd6 17.Qc2 Bd7 18.Rfe1 Rac8 19.Bg3 Qc6 20.Be5 b4 21.axb4 axb4 22.e4 c3 23.exd5 Nfxd5 24.bxc3 bxc3 25.Ne4 Qg6 26.Qb3 c2 27.Nc5 Rxe5 28.Rxe5 Nf4 29.Rc1 Bc6 30.Qxb6 Nxg2 31.Qa6 Ra8 32.Qd3 Nh4 33.Re3 Qg5 34.Ne4 Nf3+ 35.Kg2 Qf4 36.d5 Ne5 37.Qxc2 Bxd5 38.Rd1 Nxg4 39.hxg4 Qxg4+ 40.Kf1 Ra2 41. Qd3 Qh4 42. Nf6+ gxf6 43. Rg3+ 1-0

MCF Selection Guidelines is out

Malaysian Chess Federation has published its guidelines for selection to all international tournaments. You can read it here These guidelines take effect from this month - March 2010.

MCF has finally formed a Selection Committee. Very good. The current committee are
Chairman - Tan Sri Ramli Bin Ngah Talib
Deputy Chairman - Hj Ibrahim A. Bakar
Secretary - Mr. Gregory Lau
Committee members - Pn. Haslindah Ruslan , En. Abd Hamid Majid, Hj Ibrahim Yaacob Committee

For team events like the Olympiad and Asian Team Championships, the top four from the mens and womens Malaysian Masters will be chosen. A fifth choice will be at the discretion of the MCF President.

The Masters tournament top four are already known.

Mens
1. Mas Hafizul
2. Mok Tze Meng
3. Lim Yee Weng
4. Nicholas Chan

Women
1. Nurul Huda
2. Nur Nabila
3. Fong Mi Yen
4. Alia Bakri

Teh committee reserves the right to exercise final discretion in the selection of players for the National Squad. In the event that one player decides to pull out from participation after selection, the SC has the final say on a replacement.

As 2010 is an olympiad year, the above will form the team to this year's event which will be held in the town of Khanty-Mansiysk in Siberia.

Selection for other individual events like the Continental Championships, Zonal Championships and Commonwealth Open Championship will be based on the highest ranked Malaysian in FIDE rating list at that time.

Meet the Parents

From MCF blog, I got this information:

The Malaysian Chess Federation will hold a MCF – Meet the Parents Forum in conjunction with the National Age-Group Chess Championship 2010 in Penang to clarify certain issues regarding the Selection Guidelines, Ratings , international representation and other matters. The Malaysian Chess Federation cordially invites all parents/ guardians for this forum . Details as below :-

Date : 14th March 2010 (Sunday)
Time : 1700 hours
Venue : Dewan Sri Pinang, Pulau Pinang


Main agenda :

1. MCF Selection Guidelines
2. International representation for juniors. Qualifications
3. National Rating
4. Tournament Rules
5. National Junior Training
6. Sponsorships - Funding

This is a very interesting initiative by the Malaysian Chess Federation. I hope it will lead to more transparency in all MCF matters, something which I have been pushing for.

The Eagle has Landed?

The Eagle has Landed is the title of a Jack Higgins book, a fictional war story. A group of German commandos land in World World II England to capture Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bring him back to Germany. I read it when I was a teenager and it was really captivating and written in a vintage Jack Higgins style. It was also made into a successful movie starring the great Michael Caine (think of the butler in The Dark Knight) I recommend both book and movie.

GilaChess uses a similar title to announce the arrival of GM Ziaur Rahman. Ziaur was brought to Malaysia by Dato' Tan Chin Nam. The stated objective is to assist the DAT Chess Centre boost its activities and promote chess learning and teaching.

It cannot be cheap to host a grandmaster here (purported for a whole year). There is his fee, two way air tickets and also board and lodgings to be paid. Also how about the cost for someone to ferry him around?

A day after touchdown at KLIA he was whisked off to Ipoh to compete in the Perak Grand Prix which he won (naturally) with full seven points.

Now I've been scratching my head for the past few days upon reading this news. How does dropping a 2500+ Elo rated grandmaster into a local chess tournament help promote chess? On the contrary it is detrimental as local players are now deprived of a prize (well I presume Ziaur will win the first prize in any local tournament). If the aim is to allow locals a chance, maybe once in a lifetime, to compete against a grandmaster (seven "lucky" players got the opportunity to lose to him), it is better to get him to play simultaneous. This way more can play against him.

I also noticed his name has been entered for the 2010 KL Open. This makes even less sense to me, paying a grandmaster to come and play in a major open in Malaysia. Anybody care to explain the logic here?

What is the future of Malaysian chess? (Final Part)

For too long, our chess has been taking a stroll through the wilderness. It is time we get back onto the highway and it is time for the leadership to show the way. After five parts of analysing the chess scene and MCF, I would like to put forward some suggestions now.

At the DATCC meeting in January, I outlined three fronts that MCF should tackle. They are money, organization and people and goal setting.

Money
Let us face the facts, without money nothing can be done. MCF has always been weak in this area. Don't blame MCF, it is hard to ask for money when you do not have the results to show. Nobody will put money into something that show no returns.

Perhaps MCF should set up a fund and appoint a suitable person to manage it. This person should also be tasked to find ways to generate revenue back into the fund and to stretch it as far as possible. The fund will be used to finance the projects required to achieve the goals set.

The fund will require a willing sponsor to start it with the seed money.

Organization and People
Currently most of the work rests on the shoulders of one or two person. There is a general feeling that these persons control everything. This can be solved by setting sub-committees to be set up to manage the following areas:
Development and Training
Appoint a Chief Coach and two or more Assistant Coaches. They will be responsible for two squads, here I will just call them "A" and "B" team. The coaches will pick suitable candidates for the two squads. The objective of "B" team is to progress into the "A" team. The objective of the "A" team is to progress to replace the current senior players.

Although age is not really a factor, I think that the "B" team will mostly (at least in the first year) consists of junior players aged fourteen and below. Progression will be based on the evaluation of the coaches which will be carried out yearly. Players may be dropped out of the squads if they do not show sufficient improvement. This is to ensure a competitive environment and also that those who do not have the required talent and capabilities make way for fresh blood.

Frankly there is a lot of planning and execution in this area.

Selection
This committee will come up with the criterias and select our players for various events. I think there should be at least three person in this committee to avoid decisions being seen as biased. The decisions should be in writing and published on MCF web-site (if there is one).

Goal Setting
I already talked about this in Part 4 but it is worth repeating. If we do not start setting our goals we will never get out of the wilderness.

Do we want to achieve a first grandmaster? A champion in the World Youth Championships? Introduce chess in schools? Start planning now and put the programs in place to support our chess talents.

Sometimes I think it is very difficult because all three areas require the other two to be ready almost at the same time. If there is money but no proper organization and people in place, nothing will happen. If you have the money and organization but nobody has the vision (goals), nothing will happen either. And finally, you can have thought out the goals you want to achieve,got all the right people together, but without the money it is just a lot of people sharing some dreams.

Karpov for FIDE President

A report on Chessvibes that Karpov is seriously considering standing for the FIDE President post. The last time the FIDE Presidency was occupied by a real chess player was when the Icelandic grandmaster Friðrik Ólafsson held the post from 1978 to 1982.

The FIDE elections are due to be held during the General Assembly of the FIDE Congress which will be held during the 39th Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk in September 2010. Not everyone can simply stand for president. You have to be nominated by your chess federation. As of writing, the Russian Chess Federation have not yet nominated Karpov.

I believe a person of his stature can garner the necessary support to take on the incumbent, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov who has held the post since 1995. Karpov may be way past his prime as a chessplayer but he is still very much a respected person. When his long time rival, Gary Kasparov was imprisoned for his anti-Putin protests, Karpov surprised everyone by using his political connection to visit Kasparov in prison. Even though I believe it is partly a public relations gimmick, you got to give it to the man. Appearing to side with a government opposition figure, even indirectly, is not something you do in a country such as Russia. Consider the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the Russian oligarchs, who at one time was worth billions. He was imprisoned in 2003 on tax fraud but it is commonly acknowledged that the real reason was his financial support of several political parties. While Kasparov was released after five days, Khodorkovsky is still in prison today.

So between Kirsan and Karpov, I'll take Karpov any day.

What is the future of Malaysian chess? (Part 5)

If you have not read the previous posts on this topic, you might might want to read Part 1 ,Part 2 ,Part 3 and Part 4 first.

The MCF council is made up of the President, Deputy President, three Vice-Presidents, Honorary Secretary and Assistant Secretary, Honorary Treasurer and four Committee Members. The council usually meets once a month to discuss pertinent matters, though nowadays I am not sure of the frequency.

The Hon. Secretary does most of the day to day running and leg-work of the MCF affairs. The Secretary have to manage correspondence, arrange council meetings and take minutes and a hundred and one other tasks. The Secretary also have to make a lot of the on-the-spot decisions (hopefully with consultation with the other council members). A good example will be the last minute selection of the last two spots for the 1st Women Masters matches.

In some associations/bodies this is the only full time paid position because of the amount of work required of the secretary. In MCF, the secretary position is given the exalted title of Honorary Secretary, maybe because this is a thankless position and an unpaid one. Nevertheless, this position is the single most important one in the MCF and probably the most powerful.

There is also the issue of conflict of interests. Some council members are chess coaches. For some, it is even the only source of income. Sometimes the member's children are also actively involved in the game. Being in such positions, they are able to exert some influence in their students or children's favour.

I have been around long enough to see many injustice been done to players. A recent example, Lim Yee Weng achieved his final IM norm at the 2008 Malaysian Open and his rating went over 2400. Normally, he should have his title ratified by FIDE at the Dresden Olympiad the same year. But it was not until late 2009 that he was awarded the title by FIDE. Reason being that MCF never submitted an application for him for almost a year. Note: Mok Tze Meng achieved his final norm at the 2009 Malaysian Masters and received the title at the same time as Yee Weng. However, as he later told me, he had to be pro-active and take matters in his own hand. Otherwise he could suffer the same fate as Yee Weng.

If this kind of things happen to our top players, imagine what can happen to our junior players. They are truly at the mercy of organizers and officials. I also used to do chess coaching and over the years I have been told by parents of these kind of abuses.

a) Children of some officials obtained sponsorship to tournaments while they had to pay out of their own pockets.

b) Biased selection

c) Victimization. Read First Gm for confirmation on this.

When I asked these parents why they do not speak up or publicize their experiences, they were reluctant because they were afraid to be branded troublemakers and their children will be subject to further mistreatment. This is also confirmed by First GM in the above link.

It will be detrimental if these our juniors decide to give up on the game due to such reasons.

The Shoutbox Attack

It is not a new opening variation, rather an off the board kind of attack.

When I wrote the post on the Women Masters Selection I had no idea so many others have the same point of view.

It looks like there are many chess lovers who are concerned with the Malaysian chess scene but are unable or do not want to be speak up publicly.

This is proved by the many comments on the shoutbox on this blog as well as other blogs like DATCC. Shoutbox does not require identity verification, the poster can pretty much use any name he/she likes. Unfortunately this allows the unscrupulous to impersonate others.

There are also those who under the shadow of anonymity, takes the opportunity to embark on highly personal attacks directed at MCF Secretary, Gregory Lau. While I disagree with his choice of the participants, I do so in the spirit of positive criticism and I do not condone the way that Greg has been vilified. As of this morning I have removed most comments which I think have no value nor of benefit to chess.

On the positive side, there are some who gave their view of the selection, which I happened to agree with. I will continue to write down these thoughts in Part 5 of the Future of Malaysian Chess series.

Rookie Tornado Results

Rank	SNo.	Name	Rtg	FED	Pts	BH.	BHm.	SB.	Category	Ranking
1	17	Mohamad Raimi Rahim	0	MAL	6.0	31	22	25.50		First
2	15	Ismail Hassim	0	MAL	5½	33½	24	25.75		Second
3	25	Sunil Kali Vanam	0	MAL	5½	25	19	18.50	U15	Third
4	29	Wu Wen Long	0	MAL	5.0	32½	23½	21.50		Fourth
5	2	Yee Jian Yang	1384	MAL	5.0	29½	21½	20.00		Fifth
6	11	Amir Abdul Hakim	0	MAL	5.0	27	19½	16.50
7	5	Ethan Wong Hsien Aun	1320	MAL	5.0	25	19	14.50	U15	First Under 15
8	16	Justin Kumaran	0	MAL	4½	31	23	17.75
9	1	Syed Remizan Syed Sobri	1399	MAL	4.0	28	20	13.50
10	4	Hew Zhenjing	1324	MAL	4.0	27	20	12.00	U15	Second U 15
11	6	Goh Xin Yen	1310	MAL	4.0	26½	18½	12.00	U15	Third U 15
12	14	Iskandar Rashid	0	MAL	4.0	24½	18	10.50
13	12	Andrew Yap	0	MAL	4.0	23½	16½	09.50
14	24	Rohizan Mohd Ali	0	MAL	3½	29½	21	11.75
15	27	Victoar Imanueol Simon	0	MAL	3½	24	18	10.75
16	8	Liew Ashton	1229	MAL	3½	23½	16½	08.25	U15
17	7	Vinton Wong Hsien Loong	1264	MAL	3½	21½	15	07.25
18	18	Mohd Nasir Kamarol Zaki	0	MAL	3.0	26½	19½	08.00
19	21	Muhammad Hafiz Hisham	0	MAL	3.0	24½	17½	09.50	U15
20	9	Evan Loo Hsien Rang	1215	MAL	3.0	23½	16½	07.00	U11	First U 11
21	26	Tan Wei Ting	0	MAL	3.0	20½	14	05.00	U11	Second U 11
22	22	Nadia Syafiqah Hisham	0	MAL	3.0	18	13½	05.50	U11	Third U 11
23	3	Sim Chung Seng	1366	MAL	3.0	17½	12	03.50
24	23	Nur Sabrina Hisham	0	MAL	2½	22	16½	07.25	U11
25	19	Muhamad Syazwan Sufian	0	MAL	2.0	21	16½	04.00	U15
26	28	Vinodh Kumar Kuru	0	MAL	2.0	21	14½	04.00	U15
27	10	Abdul Hakim Nordin	0	MAL	1½	18½	13	04.25
28	13	Cobein Kumar Kuru	0	MAL	1½	16½	12½	01.25	U15
29	20	Muhammad Alinur Abu Bakar	0	MAL	1.0	22½	15½	03.50	U15