Results of Recent Local Tournaments
Event was just over on 11/12/99. Details are still coming in. Will update as soon as possible.
This event drew a total of 74 participants. An amazing number, considering that it was no one day but a 4 days event.
Most of the participants were between the age of 13-16. Perhaps their abundant youthful energy is one explaination why most did not manage to fully utilize the 1.5 hours allocated per side. This event did not draw as many SCF rated youths as hoped. There were only 10 rated players there. However, this did not diminish the fight in most of the youngsters present. Many fought to reach top spots. To make my point, the unrated Tan Kian Wei, seeded 60(!) was 3rd place with 6/7 points! Especially noteworthy were the way most of the participants conducted themselves. On the whole, the partcipants were very cooperative and despite a few minor disputes there were no great harm done. As chief arbiter of this event, I would like to thank on behalf of the organising committee all the partcipants for being so cooperative and understanding throughout the gruelling 4 days event.
Top seed Goh Weiming looked set to be the runaway winner as he merely dropped 0.5 points to 3rd seed Mark Kay on the 5th round. The unexpected happened in round 6. The favourite was downed by 2nd seed Wong KangWei! A complicated middlegame with attack on both kings on the same side proceeded, which fizzled into a late middlegame position with Weiming's double bishops versus Kangwei's lone rook. It was the addition 2 passed pawns on the h-file as well as the active position of the rook that decided the day, though. Great game by both sides. The game score will be out in a week's time. Watch this space.
Many promising youths played here, displaying a maturity and skill beyond their age. Noteworthy is one U12 partcipant who made it into the top ten list. He is Chia Luck Yong, Clement Chia's brother. I guess playing good chess runs in that family.
Congratulations to all prize winners, especially to the champion of this U18 event, Mark Kay.
Open
I do not yet have the full details of this 2 days event. Will update as soon as possible.
Please check SCF webpage for results.
Congratulations to CM Lau Keng Boon, the 1999 BBCC Open Champion. Congratulations also to other prize winners(in sequence) : CM Goh Weiming, Tan Chor Chuan, Andrew Lim, Gilbert Tay, Navin Salawani, Yee Kah Leong, Aditya Praseto, Lim Yong Kiang and Seow Yong Li.
CM Shawn Ho won the U-21 section. Shawn just ORD and is now in NUS, Law Faculty 1st year. He is also now the vice-chair of NUS Chess Club.
Event organisers are Mr. Tan Puchen and Mr. Honyi. These two undergraudates are dedicated not only to the game, but to making chess available to all chess players. Indeed, they intend to maintain their reputation of orgainsing the cheapest (in terms of entry fees) chess tournaments in Singapore! Three cheers for Puchen and Honyi! (By the way, these two chaps are trained by the semi-retired Mr. Khoo Geok Cheong. Mr. Khoo was a well known arbiter as well as a regular player.)
Congratulations to NM Koh Kum Hong for successfully defending his trophy. Jimmy Ng tied for 1st place but lost on tie-break. Good job, Jimmy! Jimmy had been "resting" for some months now and we expected to hear more from this national player in the near future.
A total of 12 teams participated. This year's turnout was down by 4 teams compared to the same event held last year.
Some changes were made to the point system, probably due to the football fervour that is taking Singapore by storm now. Winning each round net 3 points; a draw gets 1 point while a loss has nothing.
Intchess sent 3 teams with impressive first and second boards. It was obvious that they were aiming for the top 2 prizes of S$700 and S$500. One team (Morons) had GM Tu Hoang Thong in board one and FM Chia Chee Seng as second board. Their board 3 was a veteran player whose name I unfortunately don't have. The other Intchess team had GM Wu Shao Bin and NM Xu Jiaping holding the first 2 boards. Lastly, the 3rd teeam had NM Koh Kum Hong and Jopie Massie.
There are some rules in this event meant to prevent any team from becoming unfairly strong. One of them is "..only one IM or GM per team." Perhaps they should also include up to FMs & NMs in their exclusion list, if they wish to be really fair.
Still, many local teams were undaunted by that show of strength. Local favourites were "Deep Blue" comprising of CM Lau Keng Boon, CM Goh Weiming and Toh Chin Chuan. Captain of last year's champion team Tan Chor Chuan could not reform his winning team and had to settle for a less powerful lineup with Yee Kah Leong as his second board. His team was aptly and humorously named "I look Weak". CM Foo, together with Navin and friend was another upset factor. Junior Tay and wife combination, "Chomp Chomp", was not one to be underestimated too.
Another "power" team was IM Hsu's team. He had Dr. Nithinathan and Ye Junsheng as teammates.
Other players around were experienced tournament players Francis Guok, Kelvin Ou, Ang Jia Jun, Jopie Massie, Koh Kum Hong
The final result was rather surprising. This year's champion is "Deep Blue". GM Tu's team made it to second place while CM Foo's team made it to 3rd spot. GM Wu's team was a disappointing 4th place.
Other than cash prizes, Informator CDs were given as consolation prizes to a few teams.
Congratulation to all prize winners. Some of the games from this event will be out soon for download. It will be in cbf format. As this was a rapid event, many score sheets were incomplete as time trouble approached.
Congratulation to prize winners, especially this year's champion, "Deep Blue".
The 50th National Interschools(Team) Chess Championship was held at 2 places, the Primary Section at SIGC and the rest at the Singapore Scouts Association, on 01/06/99 and 02/06/99.
Guest of honour was Mr. Sam Tan from CDAC and chief arbiter was Mr. George Wong. He was assisted by variou deputies including Miss Xu Jiaping, GM Tu Hoang Thong, Mr.Jopie Massie, Mr.Kenny Chern, IA Lim Chye Lye, IA I. Leong and FM Chia Chee Seng.
Section : Secondary Girls
Section : U14 Boys
Section : U17 Boys
Section : Junior CollegeGirls
Section : Juunior College Boys
Please check at SIGC for results of Primary Sections.
In order of positions:
Before round one, most people tend to assume that the top seeded players will win most if not all the prizes. Well, when GM Tu, IM Su, IA Leong, Dr. Nithianathan and Chia Keng San are around, who would think otherwise?
However, things did not go as predicted, to many people's relief, else those seeded 50th may as well don't play! Dr. Nithia was upseted in round 1! He was up in material and position. When the win was inevitable, he was checkmated! From then onwards he never really recover.
It seemed that the good doctor was busy answering calls on his handphone during his game and thus lost concentration. To all handphone owners, it would not be difficult to extract the moral of this story!
The top 2 seeds proceeded smoothly through the first 4 rounds. Eventually they have to meet. GM Tu essayed his pet Tromp against the well booked IM Hsu and after some excitement the game concluded peacefully.
Round 6 saw another 2 upsets. GM Tu was paired against Olympiad player Jopie Massie. In their last encounter, Jopie played the Morra against the GM and fought hard to earn a deserving draw. This time, the Vietnamese GM needed the win to ensure a share of the first prize but the full point eluded him and the shocked GM, obviously out of practice, had to settle for 5th place.
IA Leong took two draws in rounds 4 and 5 to (presumably) avoid meeting both Li Yang and Tu. The 3rd seed veteran was paired against the seeded 18th Ye Junsheng. He lost and Junsheng ascended to 3rd place while IA Leong fell to 11th position.
There were a few ladies playing in this event. To take note are GM Tu's students Miss Duong Thi Ngoc Thuy and Miss Truong Nhi Ha. They both performed credibly with 3/6 each.
IM Hsu Li Yang won the final round comfortably to share first prize with Jopie. Congratulations to all winners.
N.B. There were 76 participants. Most of them are juniors (U21). Arbiter was Mr. George Wong..
This event, or GYTICC for short, is the first of its kind. Organized by the Nanyang Technological University, GYTICC was intended to be an international event.
Invitations were extended to many tertiary institutions across the globe and though all expressed great interest, many schools cannot participate due in timing.
Despite that, GYTICC managed to draw 9 teams, including teams from as far as India (Madras University, or MU) and Malaysia (UTM). The remaining 7 teams hail from various tertiary institution from Singapore, including National University of Singapore(NUS), Nanyang Technological University(NTU), Singapore Polytechic(SP) and Temasek Polytechnic(TP).
The 7 days event, from 16th May to 22nd May, was fun filled with lots of excitement and activities. Other than chess, excursions to places of interests and cultural shows were held, much to the delight of the participants.
The eventual champion is Madras University. They drew with NUS 'B' and UTM, and demolished the other teams. Second place was NUS 'A'. They lost to MU and drew with SP but beat the rest. 3rd place was NTU 'A', followed by NUS 'B'(4th) and finally SP(5th).
NTU had done a great job as host and organiser and it is the hope of all participants to meet chessplayers from even more countries in GYTICC'2000.
N.B. In the Intervarsity-Polytechnic 1999 held in January, Singapore Polytechnic took top spot with 1 draw(with NUS) and 4 wins. NUS came in second with 2 draws and 3 wins. 3rd was NTU, followed by Ngee Ann Polytechic and TP.
This is a downloadable file with some games from GYTICC. Games were mainly by NUS B players. If there are problems downloading this file, just write to GYTICC and I'll send one over.
FM Chia Chee Seng scored an impressive 8 points, dropping half points only to colleague I. Leong and Aditya from RI.
Jopie Massie was a deserving 1st runner up. He lost to the champion and drew with 3rd placed Ananta Bagas Prama. Ananta is good chess player. Even national player Kek Wei Chuan had to concede a draw against him with the white pieces in this year's Singapore Open.
In order of positions:
Many top locals played in this one day event. There were a few who failed to perform. NM Koh Kum Hong (2239), CM Navin Sawalani and Jopie Massie did not make it to the top 10 positions. Must be basking too much in the holiday mood.
Congratulations to the chinese grandmaster who took top spot. The unrated Johore player Leong Mun Wan is not one to take little notice of. His tournament performance rating of 2460 was nothing short of impressive!
In order of positions:
Just look at the rating of the top 10 list! All are national players and all have rating above 2000! Clearly, this year's National Chess Champion is one of the strongest ever. Even 13th and 14th placed were national players like Ostric Mooi (SIN, 2124) and Jopie Massie (SIN, 2076). It is a shame for those who missed this event, like myself. What an experience it will be to play among such veteran chess players like Hoon Cheng, Prof. Lim and Meng Leong, and at the same time cross swords with the younger group comprising of Chong Ghee, Mark and Junior.
Congratulations to FM Chan, for emerging top spot from such a strong field.
There was a playoff for the Championship title and the results are as follows
NM Koh 0 - FM Ong 1
FM Chan 1 - NM Koh 0
FM Ong 1/2 - FM Chan 1/2
Final Results of playoff
National Champion:
FM Chan Peng Kong 1 1/2 (tie break)
Runner-up: FM Ong Chong Ghee 1 1/2
Third: NM Koh
Another strong event! Hot favourite Goh Weiming did not win outright. There were no IMs around but all the 'dinosaurs' were back vis.Chan Peng Kong, Teo Kok Siong, Alphonsus Chia ,Mok Kwong Weng plus Koh Kum Hong, Foo Hsiang Ming, Goh Wei Ming, Chua Han Wei, Malcolm Tan and the list goes on.
Goh and Koh tied for 1/2nd places with 6/9 pts. Congratulations to all prize winners.
N.B. Many thanks to Dr. Nithianathan who contributed the above information.
This year's NUS Blitz Open was won by Yee Kah Leong with a perfect score of 6/6. The event was held at the Sports Hall on a Friday evening. This event is one of the tournaments organized by the NUS chess sub-club and was held together with a similar competition on the Chinese Chess side. Sadly, this year's turnout was quite bad. There were only 6 players who participated and out of these, only a few had any realistic chances of winning the event. The fact that yours truly was able to come in second is a testament to that fact.
Why this is so seems to be a lack of communication among the organisers and the players. It seems that the tournament was supposed to be postponed to another date but in the end was not. Players like Foo Hsiang Ming and James Long were not present and this sort of lessen the prestige of the event. I'm sure that if these people were around, they would have given the Champion a run for his money (although there's no prize money for this event).
Anyway, there was no stopping Yee Kah Leong as his experience from playing with people like Dr. Nithia and Koh Kum Hong showed and he simply cruised home. All in a day's work………
Many thanks to Kek Wei Chuan for contributing this article.
In order of positions:
Congratulations to Mr. Chan Peng Kong for becoming 1999's National Rapid Champion.
In order of positions:
Congratulations to CM Mark Chan for becoming 1999's Singapore Open Chanmpion.
In order of positions:
An impressive field of chess players indeed. Among them are locally reknown speed demons, although a few seemed to have left their speed gloves at home! The absence of Wu Shao Bin, Tu Hoang Thong, Goh Weiming (and many others) were deeply felt too. Their presence would have added much spice to this event.
FM Chia was totally "power overwhelming" here, leading the nearest rival by 1.5 points! He deserved to be feared not only as one of the fastest player on the local chess circuit, but also as an opening theoretician who knows his openings inside out. Congratulations, Mr. Chia.
This new year rapid event is a first. I supposed all those who played there, especially the youths, must had been careless with thier ang pow money! (Webmaster: "Ang Pow" is a chinese phrase meaning "red packets". It is a chinese tradition to give small amounts of money enclosed in red coloured envelopes to young people and children. Only married couples are required by tradition to give "ang pows". The sums of money must be even numbers because Chinese believe that even numbers represent good luck.)
This event was held on a Sunday, 21st of February. News regarding the absence of GM Tu Hoang Thong and GM Wu Shaobin at the "Ang Pow Rapid" as they rushed home to celebrate Lunar New Year with their families must have been poorly circulated. Only 40 odd people turned up for this event. Notable absentees were Goh Weiming, Chua Hanwei, Lau Keng Boon, Junior Tay and many others. These people are all notoriously fast players.
However, there are no lack of strong players in this field! Top seeds were NM Kok Kum Hong(SIN), FM Chia Chee Seng(SIN), WIM Khgeay Angela(UBE), NM Mark Chan(SIN ), Dr. Nithianathan(1998 FIDE-rated Tourney Champion with 8/9!), olympiad player Jopie Massie and Lim Geok Hock(1997 Cairnhill Novice champion). Other regulars were Mr. Hariharan, who have been absent from the chess scene for quite a while, Mak Chee Keong and Yee Kah Leong.
After a day of hard fight, the results may come as a surprise to some. The very experience NM Koh must have left his speed gloves at home, dropping full points to FM Chia and Yee Kah Leong and ended up 4/6. NM Koh upset defeat to Kah Leong was due to the master trying too hard, and in time trouble blundered the drawn game. Credit must be given to Kah Leong too for surviving against "The Crow". Incidentally, Kah Leong drew with Koh in another rapid event in 1998, the Queenstown CC Club Championship.
Mark Chan did not perform as well as expected too, managing only 4/6. Must be tired from his NS training! By the way, when Mark enters NTU in 2000, we will probably see NTU fielding a team in either Division One or even the National Division. Despite having excellent chess players in NTU(1998 I.V.P. Champions), they were handicapped by their players not having FIDE ratings. So everyone, watch out for NTU's team next year!
Mr. Hariharan played well, managing a respectable 4/6, considering his long hiatus. Be sure to watch out for him in the coming tournaments.
The grand Champion is FM Chia Chee Seng. FM Chia is a notoriously fast player and locally reknowned theoretician who even blitz out his moves in long games against formidable opponents. This is what I call "learn-by-heart"! Mr. Chia demolished the entires field and earned a deserving S$188.00.
First runner up was Dr. Nithianathan with 5/6 and took the S$128.00 2nd prize. Following closely was Jopie Massie with also 5/6. Jopie lost out on tie break and had to settled for 3rd place with S$108.00. 4th and 5th winners got S$88.00 and S$68.00 respectively. They are WIM Khegay Angela and Yee Kah Leong.
Congratulations to all prize winners.
There were a few players who performed much better than their ratings suggested. SCF rated 1783 Ananta Bagas performed well with 4.5/6. His tournament performance rating was 1949, a whopping 170 points more than his allegro rating! He came in 6th placed, edged out on tiebreak by Kah Leong. Another is the unrated Che Hassan Abdulla. Hassan came in 7-13 with 4/6. Keep an eye on these two; they are breaking out on the local chess scene in a big way.
This is the first such event organised by BBCC Chess Club Committee. Similar to the annual Interschools and Interclubs, this is also a team tournament.
There were 3 sections. Section A(JC Boys), section C(girls) and section B(secondary school boys). ACJC took top spot in Section A...
Details will be up shortly.
Held on the day when all Muslims break their month long fast in jubilation was another rapid event.
Over 70 people registered for this event. For a supposedly small event compared to the annual CC Opens, this turnout was most respectable.
A number of Myanmar players unexpectedly joined this tournament and took top places. The winner of this event was GM Tu Hoang Thong(Vietnam), and even he had to concede 0.5 points to one of them.
GM Wu Shaobin(China) came in third placed. Among the local players, Dr. Nithianathan performed best with 4.5/6, taking 6th place. Well done, Dr. Nithia!
For more information, please check out the results list at SIGC.
Comments:
The prize money had increased from the usual $100.00 to $150.00 for the winner. Increments had been made for the other prizes as well. This is a welcome sign, and an indication that the organisers realized that $100.00 is not much incentive for most chess players to invest $20.00 in.
This trend seems set to stay. The coming tournaments show similar increments in cash prizes.
However, this year's prize money for the Singapore Open remains the same as 1998. For a grand event like the annual Singapore Open, $300.00(1st prize)
The Wong Kan Seng Challenge Trophy (in honour of Minister of Parliament Mr. Wong Kan Seng) was an excellent idea. This team tourney requires each team to sent two representatives from each of the four intellectual games (International Chess, Chinese Chess, Weiqi and Bridge) to make up a team of eight. The scores achieved by each game are added up to give the total score for each team.
Nanyang Technological University took top spot, winning the 1st Wong Kan Seng Challenge Trophy and the S$1600.00 prize money.
Singapore Weiqi Association was 1st runner up, "Kamikaze" came in 3rd while NUS "A" took 4th spot.
The Christmas Overnight Rapid was won by GM Tu Hoang Thong. GM Wu Shao Bin was 1st runner up. Congratulations to both grandmasters.
Please check out SCF official webpage for tournament details.
Comments:
It was a good idea to celebrate Christmas with a night of chess bashing. Refreshments were provided during the countdown to Christmas day.
However, the entry fees are just too much, compared to the priize monies. For a S$20.00 entry fee, top prize is a measley S$100.00. At least people can argue that for S$50.00, they have a chance to win top prize of S$1600.00 at Cairnhill CC Open, but a 1:5 ratio is ridiculous.
It could have been fun to spent Christmas morning with fellow chess friends playing chess all night, but the average woodpusher like myself will surely feel the pinch, especially with GMs and IMs around, our chances of winning any prizes is close to negligible.
Top seed GM Ian Rogers won the Cairnhill CC Open with and impressive 6.5/7. The presence of GM Tu Hoang Thong, GM Wu Shao Bin, IM Tu Hoang Thai, IM Dede Liu, as well as several top local players (Wong Meng Leong, Junior Tay, Kenneth Tan, Malcom Tan, Goh Weiming, Nithianathan etc) failed to make an impression .
Many players missed chances of win or draw against Rogers. GM Tu could have drawn his game while Junior Tay had a winning position. With accurately play, of course. As usual, the stronger player prevails, and GM Rogers steered through all obstacles to win the S$1600.00 top prize + challenge trophy. Congratulations!
GM Tu Hoang Thong(VIE), GM Wu Shao Bin(CHI), IM Liu Dede(IND) and Wong Meng Leong(SIN) shared the prize money from 2nd-5th positions.
This event attracted 66 players from 14 different countries. Among the nationalities were Indonesians, Vietnamese, Chinese, Malaysians, Philipinoes, Indians and even Hungarians! The attractive prize monies help much, no doubt, especially in the current cash strapped environment.
Comments:
The event was well runned by professional arbiters and the playing environment was rather good (air-conditioned, analysis room, 2 boards per table ).
Time controls of 2 hours per side to play and finish is most acceptable. A general increase in the quality of most games were observed. Lets hope that this trend will continue.
However, the room was rather crowded with over 70 people in it most of the time.
Insuffiicient chess sets in the analysis room.
The high entry fees(S$50.00 for non-members of Cairnhill CC) must have discouraged many from playing. Players under 21 should be charged a lower fee.