Tan Chin Nam the doyen of local chess

CHESS
By QUAH SENG SUN

Datuk Tan Chin Nam, 85, is still up to playing chess.

LAST week, I wrote about the youngest faces that had come to play in the main event of this year’s Malaysian Chess Festival, the Arthur Tan Malaysian open chess championship.

It then struck me that if I want to do a similar story on the oldest player in the festival, I would have to look at the Lee Loy Seng seniors open chess championship.

Everybody in the chess circle knows that the oldest active chess player in the country is none other than Datuk Tan Chin Nam himself.

Tan, 85, is the doyen of Malaysian chess. He may have been frailer than when I last saw him a year ago, but his mind was as keen as ever. “Still up to playing chess,” he said when we sat across the chessboard in the second round.

Mega festival ahead: Datuk Tan Chin Nam promises that next year’s edition will be the grandest Malaysian Chess Festival of all.

Tan soon found out to his dismay that results still favoured the younger seniors as he finished the event with a modest 1½ points that he collected from nine games.

Despite the setback, he took pride in his final game of the tournament. He lost – but for much of that game, he showed he could still mix it up as well as his opponent. He absorbed the attack in a complicated game and then simplified the position to a point where he held a piece advantage. It was only a gross blunder in the critical last hour of play when tiredness had crept into both players’ game that spoilt everything for Tan.

A draw would have been an equitable result in that game, seeing that both he and his opponent had fought and defended well.

At last year’s Malaysian Chess Festival, Tan announced that he intended to take a two-year sabbatical from sponsoring the festival. He wanted to enjoy playing the game without thinking about pumping money into organising it. There could be other reasons and I would think that one of them was that he wanted to see how the organisers would rise to the challenge, and continue with this chess festival with only his moral support.

I believe he was encouraged by what he saw: the hard work put in by the organisers in the last two to three months to get their act together. At the closing ceremony of the festival, he promised to end his sojourn and make next year’s edition the grandest Malaysian Chess Festival of all.

By the way, Tan was at least 10 years older than the next most senior competitor at the festival – Thailand’s 74-year-old Pricha Srivatanakul.

source: The Star

Armenia triumphs in chess world

Chess
BY QUAH SENG SUN

Crowded calendar keeps enthusiasts on their toes.

THERE are just too many world-class chess events which have taken place or are taking place all over the world at the same time. From Ningbo in China to Dortmund in Germany and Biel in Switzerland, my attention is being divided by this surfeit of chess activities.

Would I consider this a problem? Yes, but this is a happy problem. I don’t mind the distraction. It only proves that chess can have a crowded calendar.

So where shall I start? Perhaps, from where I left off last week, with the world team chess championship that ended in Ningbo on Tuesday with Armenia deposing Russia to become the new champion.

Poised to win: Vladimir Kramnik is creating waves at the Dortmund Sparkassen invitational chess tournament.

I thought at first that Russia was going to win this event but the Russians stumbled badly and lost to China and Azerbaijan, and in the final round, suffered the ignominy of losing to India.

Russia’s setback was the opportunity for Armenia to spring into the lead. The Armenian team had played so steadily that they hadn’t lost to any other team yet. At their worst, they drew with Russia, the United States and Azerbaijan.

On Tuesday, Armenia was due to play Ukraine in the final round. A drawn match was all that they needed to clinch the title but the Ukrainians themselves were in the chase. If they could score a crushing result like a 3½-½ win against Armenia, they may even come out tops. Maybe the Ukrainians saw the unlikelihood of this ever happening because soon after the start of the round, their match was quickly drawn.

I believe China was disappointed with this outcome because they were mathematically in contention for the title and they would only need to win by 2½-1½ against Hungary, which they did, to be the champion if Ukraine had won by any score line. The only consolation for the Chinese team was that they actually finished with the same game points as the Armenians, except that on the more important match points, they trailed the new champion.

India, Israel and Egypt found themselves out of their depth. Israel was possibly the biggest disappointment seeing how just a year ago, they had finished third in the Chess Olympiad.

India came into this event as the Asian champion but they soon realized that even finishing in the middle of the table would be a tall order. I thought they could play the role of a spoiler and take surprising points off the main title contenders but the only problem was, they could not until the very last round against Russia when the results did not count any more.

As for Egypt, there is little to be said about this African representative except that they failed totally.

And so we move on to Germany where the former world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, is creating waves at the Dortmund Sparkassen invitational chess tournament. Well, at least he has been in impressive form right until the mid-way point of this event last Monday. By the way, the tournament ends on Sunday so there is still time to see whether Kramnik will carry his advantage right through till the end.

The Dortmund Sparkassen is an elite chess tournament that goes a long way back. However, it was not until 1973 that it was converted into a regular annual event. This year’s edition is a six-player, double round-robin tournament that features Vladimir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura, Ruslan Ponomariov, Le Quang Liem, Anish Giri and local German player Georg Meier.

As mentioned, Kramnik has been showing great form. He couldn’t have been happier. In the first half of the tournament, his victims included Ponomariov, Giri, Meier and Nakamura, and he has dropped only a draw to Le. Even if he eases up on the pedal and draws the rest of his games in the second half, I believe he should coast through easily to win the top prize.

The last tournament on my list today is the annual Biel Chess Festival.

This chess festival has been around for decades. It started as a masters open tournament in 1968; the grandmaster tournament was introduced in 1976, and evolved into one of Europe’s showcase events. Like in Dortmund, this is a double round-robin tournament featuring six very strong players. Their names speak for themselves: Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexei Shirov, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich and Yannick Pelletier.

I would be very surprised if Carlsen does not win the event which will end today. On Tuesday as I was writing this story, Carlsen was leading the field with only Morozevich following hard on his tail. The rest had been left behind.

Caruana, who had won last year’s Biel grandmaster tournament, found himself trailing everyone this time around. A complete reversal of form.

source: the Star

Three times a winner

CHESS
By QUAH SENG SUN

Dr Nicholas Chan scores a hat-trick at the 38th Selangor open chess tournament.

NOW, don’t start me off. I’m not going to launch myself with superlatives to describe Dr Nicholas Chan’s feat in winning the annual Selangor open chess tournament for the third year in succession. All I’m going to say to him is, congratulations. Short and simple.

Really, there are no big words to describe Dr Chan’s hat-trick of Selangor open achievements. He was the champion in 2009, made a great defence of this title last year and then, earlier this week, he overcame some mid-tournament jitters to become the Selangor open champion again.

Hat-trick: After a close and intense fight, Dr Nicholas Chan emerged winner of the Selangor open chess ournament.

Add his tournament victory in 2004, and Dr Chan has won this event four times in the past eight years.

It wasn’t all plain sailing, though. He led until the sixth round and even reeled off five wins in a row which included a win over international master Jimmy Liew. Then Dr Chan hiccupped in the seventh round, losing to Indian international master Srinath Narayanan. Suddenly, he found Liew, Srinath and familiar Filipino player Ian Udani leap-frogging half a point over him.

With two rounds remaining, the tournament became alive. There were four contenders who could easily be winner of the tournament. However, some of them had still to play one another and so, there would be no easy gallop towards the finish line. The event was wide open.

In the eighth round, two of the leaders met. Udani and Srinath were paired together, but their game was drawn. Then Dr Chan beat Mohd Irman Ibrahim to draw level with the Indian and the Filipino. In the meantime, Liew took advantage of their lapse by disposing of his opponent, Abdul Rahim Ramli, to take the sole lead for the first time in the tournament.

So by the end of the eighth round, the standings were: Liew in front with seven points followed by Udani, Srinath and Dr Chan just half a point behind. The ninth and final round would be crucial.

To be champion, Liew would need to win his final game. A draw might have been enough, too, but he could possibly be subjecting himself to a tie-break with two other players. It wasn’t a completely appealing situation but maybe, it would be better than nothing. In any case, his final-round opponent, Udani, refused to follow the same script and in a tensely fought game, the Filipino prevailed over Liew.

Srinath was also in a good position to join Udani at the top of the standings if he could beat his opponent, the newly minted national closed champion Lim Zhuo Ren. But Lim proved to be a tougher nut than expected and he put paid to any idea that the Indian player could have.

These unexpected results presented Dr Chan with a precious lifeline which he gladly seized. Among the top contenders, he had possibly the most comfortable pairing of all. Sitting across from Mark Siew, Dr Chan outplayed his opponent to win the game and thus finish on equal points with Udani.

But this is not the end of the story. Two players stood at the top of the standings with equal points. Who would be the champion? For Dr Chan, his spurt of five wins in his first five games would now ensure him a much superior tie-break than Udani. And with this better tie-break came the coveted winner’s purse at the conclusion of this 38th Selangor open chess tournament.

source: The Star

Attention on junior players at chess championships

Chess
By Quah Seng Sun

Young players provide excitement at championships.

ONE of the most encouraging signs in local chess is the continuing willingness of the Malaysian Chess Federation (MCF) to allow their state chess affiliates to play active roles in organising some of the national-level chess competitions.

Take the annual national age group chess championships as an example.

Last year, the Penang Chess Association was given the go-ahead to plan for this competition in George Town on behalf of the federation. This year, the challenge was offered to the Perak International Chess Association (PICA).

PICA did so in Tronoh, Perak, in a joint effort which involved Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. By all accounts, this year’s edition of the national age group championships was a great success for the organisers. A total of 380 players took part in the three-day competition which, I was told, proceeded without any hitches.

As was to be expected, the most closely watched contest was the boys’ under-18 event. There were a few junior heavyweight players in the field, the most notable among them being the top-seeded Evan Timothy Capel who was a former national closed champion and last year’s winner of the boys’ under-16 event.

This year, though, the 17-year-old would be playing in the under-18 section, no longer eligible for the younger age group event. In fact, many of his rivals who played with him in Penang last year had also been elevated to the under-18 section.

Past successes, however, do not guarantee future gains, and Evan found this out pretty quickly. By the third round, he had already dropped a point to the second-seeded Sumant Subramaniam. By the tournament’s end, he had dropped two more points to Patrick Lim Kong Hui and the new winner of the boys’ under-18 event, Muhd Nabil Azman Hisham.

This was also a sobering experience for Sumant. After his heady win against Evan, he was brought down to earth by two consecutive losses to Muhd Nabil and Low Jun Jian. A further loss to Chong Shao Hong also ended his hopes in this tournament.

For Muhd Nabil, though, everything fell into place for him perfectly. He had lost to Evan in the boys’ under-16 event last year but this year, he exacted revenge on the top seed. By also defeating the second seed, there could only be one description for Muhd Nabil: worthy winner. His draws were with Jun Jian and Mark Siew Kit Tze, but he won all the other six games.

Now with the national age group championships over, the focus this week is on the national closed and national women’s closed championships that are taking place at the Wilayah Complex in Kuala Lumpur.

Today is already the third day of play and there are only five more rounds to go before the two competitions end on Sunday. So if you are not competing but have time on your hands, why not go and speculate who will emerge as the 2011 national champions?

The organisers tell me that as of the beginning of this week, there hasn’t been any change to the number of entries: still 89 players for the national closed and 34 players for the national women’s closed. At press time it is impossible to say whether there were any dropouts from the players’ lists or additions to it.

Anyway, I have to set the record straight in a slip of the finger that appeared in last week’s story. In my excitement to see our international master Jimmy Liew enter the fray as one of the competitors, I have inadvertently described him as a grandmaster.

I’ve received a lot of ribbing privately from friends and chess players in the past week. Really, I’m a bit embarrassed. I hope that my personal embarrassment has not spilled over to Liew. I really don’t want this episode to distract him in this national event where he is clearly the top seeded player.

So I shall wish “best of luck” to Liew, as well as wishing the same to last year’s winners Tan Khai Boon (national closed defending champion) and Fong Mi Yen (national women’s closed defending champion) and all the hopefuls this year.

Both events are being played at the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre, Wilayah Complex, Kuala Lumpur until Sunday. The games start at 9am and 3pm daily. For more information, contact Najib Wahab (016– 338 2542 or najib.wahab@chass-malaysia.com.

source: The Star online