All set for chess fest

Chess

By Quah Seng Sun

TODAY is the eve of the Malaysia Chess Festival and tomorrow, the first of six main events – the Merdeka individual rapid open tournament – will kick off the 11-day chess festival at the ballroom of Cititel Hotel at Mid Valley in Kuala Lumpur.

Elsewhere on this page is a summary of the various events that everybody can look forward to. There is something for everyone, be it a simultaneous chess game, a five-minute blitz tournament, a 30-minute rapid chess tournament or a full 90-minute normal time regulation tournament.

Concerns that I voiced last week about the Malaysia Chess Festival taking a possible beating from a major rival tournament being planned at the same time in nearby Manila seems to have eased.

I have been checking with the organisers the whole of this week, and their confidence seems to have been restored. In fact, the organisers are delighted that the response to the festival has exceeded last year’s.

Pitting wits: Current national champions Tan Khai Boon (left) and Fong Mi Yen will be participating in the Malaysia open tournament.

Tomorrow’s one-day event has attracted at least 74 players. This was the number told to me three days ago and as more chess players arrive in Kuala Lumpur, the number of participants is set to increase.

Similarly, too, there are at least 67 teams in the Merdeka team rapid open with foreign grandmasters from Australia, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Germany and India joining in the fray.

But the real icing on the cake is the increased entries for the main event, the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open, that will start on Sept 1. Last year, the field consisted of exactly 100 players. Until Tuesday, 135 players have already registered for this year’s edition.

For a long time, the organisers have been overly cautious about disclosing publicly the list of participants for fear that the foreign entries could be persuaded to withdraw and play elsewhere. Maybe the fear was unfounded but then, anything can happen in the world of chess today.

Fong Mi Yen.

Nevertheless, today being the eve of the Malaysia Chess Festival where everything comes together, I can now safely say that the grandmasters registered for the Malaysia open include:

Abhijeet Gupta (India, rated 2587), Zhou Weiqi (China, 2570), Ziaur Rahman (Bangladesh, 2543), Cao Sang (Vietnam, 2540), Prasad Arun (India, 2535), David Smerdon (Australia, 2526), Dao Thien Hai (Vietnam, 2516), Wen Yang (China, 2507), R.R. Laxman (India, 2503), Xu Jun (China, 2503), Nguyen Anh Dung (Vietnam, 2500), Saidali Yuldachev (Uzbekistan, 2496), Jha Sriram (India, 2490), Xu Yuhua (China, 2488), Marat Dzhumaev (Uzbekistan, 2484), Gerhard Schebler (Germany, 2474) and Niaz Murshed (Bangladesh, 2406).

They may not be the top echelon of grandmasters in the world but hey, the Malaysia open was never about attracting the crème de la crème of grandmasters in the first place. Much like water finding its own level, grandmasters and international masters will find the right level of tournaments to suit their playing levels.

Anyway, the Malaysia open will also feature two woman grandmasters from China and Vietnam, at least 18 international masters, several Fide masters and woman Fide masters.

The Malaysian challenge will be spearheaded by international masters Mok Tze Meng and Jimmy Liew.

There is a sizeable number of Malaysian entries and apart from Mok and Liew, we have four national masters in the field, too, namely, Lim Chuin Hoong, current national champion Tan Khai Boon, Edward Lee and Evan Timothy Capel. There will also be a spotlight on Yeoh Li Tian. I should also mention the presence of two of our woman national masters, current women’s national champion Fong Mi Yen and Alia Anin Azwa Bakri, as among the competitors.

--- The Star Online

Clash of the titans

Chess

by Quah Seng Sun

The game’s super- powers battle it out.

WHO do you think would win if a match were to be played today between Russia and China? Russia is, of course, the traditional chess powerhouse of the world, while China is the top chess-playing country in Asia.

If the top 10 players in each country are taken as the basis of comparison, the Russian men leads their Chinese counterparts by 89 rating points today. And if a comparison is made of their women chess players, the difference is even smaller: a mere 11 points separate the 10 best players from both sides.

Therefore, a match between these two chess superpowers would make a very good reason to determine which country is superior.

And actually, there is such a match going on today. It is the seventh such encounter between the two countries but it did not start out as an annual match because after the first one was played in Shanghai in 2001, there was a three-year gap before the second match was organised in Moscow in 2004.

After that, the chess federations of the two countries thought it best to have an annual match and so, Argun in Russia was the host in 2006, followed by the fourth match in Nizhni Novgorod in 2007, Ningbo in China in 2008, and last year’s match in Sochi, Russia.

Tough opponent: Wang Hao, China’s chess champion.

This year’s match is taking place today in Yinzhou, Ninbo in China. It started on Aug 4 and will end this Sunday. Each side is fielding five men’s players and five women’s players.

The match comprises a Scheveningen-style of team event where the members of each team will play the members of the opposing team once at normal time controls, followed by rapidchess games and finally, a series of blitz games. Of course, to ensure an even playing field, the men are competing among themselves only and likewise, the women are playing among themselves, too.

In the first round, the China men’s team won with a 3-2 score but the Russian women won 3½-1½. In the second round, the Russian men were almost whitewashed when China won by 4½-½. However, the women’s teams fought to a 2½-2½ draw. In the third round, Russia and China tied at 2½-2½ in both the men’s and women’s contests.

The fourth round saw the men drawing on all the boards, while the Russian women edged out their Chinese opponents by a 3-2 margin. In the fifth, both the Chinese men’s and women’s sides won by 3-2.

The final score at the end of the normal time control games on Tuesday was 27 points to the China team and 23 points to Russia.

The Chinese men’s team could take credit that they did not lose any of the rounds. At their worst, they drew the third round but at their best, they almost totally blanked out the Russian men in the second round.

Here are two Wang Hao games from the match. Wang Hao is the current national champion of China. He is also a previous winner of the Malaysia open chess tournament in 2005. The first game below was from the fifth round while the other one was played in the fourth round.

White: Vladimir Potkin (Russia)

Black: Wang Hao (Chinese)

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 0-0 5.Bd3 d5 6.Nf3 c5 7.0-0 Nc6 8.a3 Bxc3 9.bxc3 Qc7 10.Bb2 Na5 11.cxd5 exd5 12.Ne5 Re8 13.a4 Rxe5 (A rather inspired exchange sacrifice. In exchange for the rook, Black gets a dominating knight into the game.) 14.dxe5 Qxe5 15.h3 c4 (This fixes White’s black-squared bishop and after which, Black can look to exchanging off White’s other bishop.) 16.Bc2 Bf5 17.Re1 Bxc2 18.Qxc2 Nb3 19.Rad1 Re8 20.f3 Nc5 21.Rd4 Nd3 22.Re2 (It was time to eliminate the black knight with 22.Rxd3.) 22...Nh5 23.e4 (23.Rxd3 is too late because of 23...cxd3 24.Qxd3 Nf4.) 23...Nhf4 24.Rd2 f5 25.Ba3 fxe4 26.fxe4 Qg5 27.Kh2 Rxe4 28.Qd1 Qe5 29.Rxe4 dxe4 30.Qg4 h5 0-1

White: Wang Hao (China)

Black: Sergei Rublevsky (Russia)

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2 Qc7 7.0-0 Nf6 8.Be3 Be7 9.f4 d6 10.a4 0-0 11.Kh1 Re8 12.Bf3 Rb8 13.Qd2 Na5 14.b3 b6 15.Rad1 Bb7 16.Nde2 Rbc8 17.Bf2 Nc6 18.g4 d5 19.e5 Ne4 20.Nxe4 dxe4 21.Bg2 Nb4 22.c3 Red8 23.Bd4 Nd5 24.Qc2 e3 25.Qd3 Bc5 26.c4 Bxd4 27.Qxd4 Nf6 28.Qxe3 Nxg4 29.Qg3 h5 30.Nd4 Bxg2+ 31.Kxg2 Qb7+ 32.Kg1 Rd7 33.h3 Nh6 34.Rd2 Rcd8 35.Rfd1 g6 36.Qe3 Kg7 37.Kf2 Qc7 38.Ke2 Kh7 39.Rd3 Qb7 40.Qf3 Qc7 41.Qc6 Rc8 42.Qxc7 Rdxc7 43.Nf3 Nf5 44.Ng5+ Kg8 45.Rd8+ Rxd8 46.Rxd8+ Kg7 47.Ne4 h4 48.Kd3 Rc6 49.b4 Rc7 50.Nf6 Rb7 51.Ra8 a5 52.b5 Ng3 53.Ne8+ Kh6 54.Nd6 Rc7 55.Rh8+ Kg7 56.Rb8 Rc5 57.Rxb6 g5 58.Rc6 g4 59.Ne4 gxh3 60.Nf2 Rxc6 61.bxc6 Nf5 62.Nxh3 Kf8 63.c7 Ne7 64.Kd4 (This was a mistake that threw away the full point. White should have played 64.c5 and 65.c6 to cut off Black’s king from the queenside.) 64...Ke8 65.Kc5 Kd7 66.Kb6 Kc8 67.Ng5 Nf5 68.Kxa5 Kxc7 69.Kb5 Nd4+ 70.Kb4 Kc6 71.a5 Ne2 72.Nh3 Nd4 73.c5 Kb7 74.Kc4 Nc6 75.Kb5 Nd4+ 76.Kc4 Nc6 77.Ng5 Nxa5+ 78.Kd3 Kc6 79.Ke4 Nb3 80.Kf3 Nxc5 81.Kg4 Nd3 82.Nh3 Kd5 83.Kxh4 ½-½

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---- The Star Online

Tough choice for chess players to turn pro

Are our players prepared to sacrifice for the game?

RIGHT after my column last week, I received a short message from one of Malaysia’s international masters.

By all accounts, it can be safely assumed that Wong Zijing is no longer playing in chess competitions. As far as I can determine, he hasn’t been playing much at all since August 2006. In fact, even social chess may have taken a back seat for him as his last known attempt at a serious chess game must have been at last year’s annual chess match between the teams of Cambridge and Oxford universities.

His friends and fellow chess players in the country may want to know that he is now pursuing his Doctorate at the University of California Berkeley in the United States. He asked me to say “hi” to them.

Before going to the States, Wong was at University of Cambridge in England and before that, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He is now doing research on a specialist area of science called metamaterials.

Anyway, after taking a look at the picture in last week’s column, Wong dropped me a short note to say that it was about time that 12-year-old Yeoh Li Tian, pictured playing a blitz game with former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov, decide whether he wants to be like “Le Quang Liem” or “one of us”.

He didn’t mince his words. The “one of us” refers explicitly to himself and his chess peers, local players like Mas Hafizulhelmi, Lim Yee Weng, Marcus Chan, Nicholas Chan and Lim Chuin Hoong.

Note this: Wong Zijing has some interesting things to say about 12-year-old chess player Yeoh Li Tian.

The “Le Quang Liem” he mentioned happens to be Vietnam’s top chess player. Liem joined the world’s grandmaster club four years ago.

Today, while only 19 years old but with an international rating of 2681 points, he is already knocking on the doors of that even more elite club of chess grandmasters who are rated at 2,700 points and above. There are not many of them, certainly not more than 40 players currently in this category of super-grandmasters.

I knew fairly well what Wong was trying to say but his note made such a fascinating impression that I wanted to know more from him.

He said that it is well known that to become a grandmaster like Liem, you need to be a professional chess player and the financial support to train abroad.

Recently, the Vietnam Chess Federation stated that Liem would require an annual fund of US$100,000. Then there is the player’s own commitment and sacrifices, especially academic sacrifice. Is our society ready for that, he questioned.

“I have a good friend in China who told me that many of the Chinese grandmasters had quit school early in their lives to take up a professional career in chess. Many of them had not even completed their primary education.

“Are our chess players prepared to make such personal sacrifices?” he asked. “My peers and I had to balance chess with our studies because at the end of the day, we have to think about our own livelihood and our direction in life.”

Livelihood. Indeed, if we look at some of our national champions, I can say that they have ended up very well in life. Mas Hafizulhelmi is today a chemical engineer, both Lim Chuin Hoong and Nicholas Chan are medical doctors, Lim Yee Weng is a lawyer while Marcus Chan is an electronics engineer.

Even Ooi Chern Ee, arguably our highest ranked player not to have become a national champion, is an actuarist. But to get where they are today, they recognise that they had to sacrifice their chess.

According to Wong, only geniuses are able to continue with this fine balance in their lives. He believed that Gata Kamsky, a chess prodigy, was one of them.

(Kamsky was born in the old Soviet Union in 1974 and his family emigrated to the United States in 1989. At 16 years old, he took his first steps towards the pinnacle of world chess and ultimately challenged Viswanathan Anand for the Professional Chess Association version of the chess crown in 1995. One year later, he challenged Anatoly Karpov for the World Chess Federation version of the chess title. After he lost both matches, he disappeared completely from the chess world for nine years to earn his law degree and then returned to top-level chess in 2004 with great success.)

Unless you are like Kamsky, Wong said, it is almost impossible to find that balance between chess and work. Where Li Tian is concerned, he suggested that the boy would have to make up his mind soon.

No doubt, his one-month stint in Beijing last year and his present chess tutelage under Bangladeshi grandmaster Ziaur Rahman would help his chess grow in the short to medium term. But he must either have the courage to make chess his profession or concentrate on his studies and eventually “be like one of us”.

“It’s a tough decision, very tough indeed,” Wong acknowledged, “but there are no two ways about it.”

---- The Star Online

Ex-chess champ Karpov on the campaign trail

Former world champion Anatoly Karpov wants to bring dignity back to the game.

CHESS By QUAH SENG SUN

THE message was clear enough. The World Chess Federation (Fide) must change or else it will continue to lose influence and significance, said Anatoly Karpov, the 12th world chess champion.

Karpov, 59, was in Kuala Lumpur for three days last week as part of a whirlwind visit through several Asian countries to raise support in his bid to be elected the next Fide president.

According to Karpov, the leadership in Fide had not achieved much in the past 15 years and had neglected the interests of many of the chess federations in its fold.

One of the sore points that Karpov raised was that the incumbent Fide president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, had alienated international sponsors.

Face-to-face: Karpov playing with 12-year-old Yeoh Li Tian.

“Chess is one of the most active sports in the world and Fide has 158 member countries.

‘In terms of members, we are among the biggest international sports federations and yet we don’t see long-term ties with sponsors that should benefit us,” Karpov charged.

“For example, world chess championship matches used to offer prize money by the millions of dollars but ever since the present Fide president came on board, we have seen lower prize monies. In fact, the many changes in the formats for the world championship cycles have caused a lot of confusion. Is it any wonder that international sponsors have shied away?” he asked.

If his team gets elected at the Fide congress this September, one priority would be to bring dignity back to chess. According to him, short 10-game or 12-game matches were hardly reflective of chess struggles at the highest levels.

“World championship matches should not be less than 16 or 18 games but Fide presently finds difficulty to bring in quality sponsors who can support matches of this length.” he said.

Karpov gave another example of the decreasing visibility, saying that significant activities like world championship matches used to be played in the big cities of the world – New York, London, Seville, Paris – but he claimed that since 1995, these events were being moved to lesser cities.

“It doesn’t say much for chess that this year’s chess Olympiad – the traditional biennial gathering for the worldwide chess family of close to 160 countries – is being held in Siberia, in a place called Khanty-Mansiysk,” he claimed.

And in truth, that is correct because I’ve written about Khanty-Mansiysk before. Even getting there is going to be problematic as most connecting flights are only available from Moscow and it’s a journey of several days.

But the chord that struck home was that in recent years, national chess federations have been feeling the pinch of having to pay increasingly higher fees for all sorts of activities. Smaller chess federations such as the Malaysian Chess Federation find that annual fees have gone up significantly.

Getting new players onto the Fide rating list, no matter their rating levels, means getting billed. Then there are the fees for registering even Fide-rated events. All these add up and it is not surprising that there are countries that find themselves temporarily out of benefit from Fide because fees are in arrears.

The MCF, for example, found out that our players were temporarily removed from the Fide rating list because of unpaid dues.

According to Karpov, countries should not be forced to fund Fide. It should be the other way around, that Fide should instead be helping the countries raise funds for their activities.

“It should make sense,” he argued, “that a happy national chess federation will contribute more towards the progress of chess.”

Apart from Malaysia, Karpov and his small entourage that included his candidate for deputy president, Richard Conn Jr, had travelled through China, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.

While in Kuala Lumpur, Karpov paid a courtesy call on Olympic Council of Malaysia president Tunku Imran ibni Almarhum Tuanku Ja’afar at the OCM office and was guest of honour at a function hosted by the Malaysian Chess Federation’s honorary life president, Datuk Tan Chin Nam, who incidentally also sits in Karpov’s Advisory Team.

The former world champion also played two exhibition blitz games with Malaysian international master Mas Hafizulhelmi and up-and-coming youngster Yeoh Li Tian, winning against both players.

■ Quah Seng Sun can be contacted at ssquah@gmail.com.

--- The Star Online