Quiet Times

I've gotten a day off from work today so I finally have time to catch some breath.

I thought this would be a good time for some down time to continue my chess studies. I could not help but feel that my chess skills have regressed. I used to be able to do my tactics puzzle with relative ease and today, I found to my horror, that out of 7 chess puzzles, I only got 1 correct and even then, I stopped my calculation short by 4 ply moves!

Of course, being out of shape made me realise I need to put in more effort in my chess studies.

Tomorrow evening for the North Sydney Club Reserves A Club Championships, I'm facing young Thomas Zhou with the White pieces. Last week, I finally got over my fear of my opponent, Horst Bleicher who has beaten me nearly every time we met and managed to defeat him in an Open Sicilian (I was Black). So I'm now on +3-2=2 .... still an average performance so far.

Last week, my brother-in-law Steven asked me what my target was for this competition. I still have another 4 games to go till the finish line and I've not actually taken time to think of what I should aim for, maybe 5.5/11 points? Or maybe aim higher? It's interesting, because before the start of the competition, I try not to think about results and to focus on each game with as much energy as possible.

So far, I've not had that bad a result but to progress further, I really need to put in some serious study.

Lumbering From One Loss To Another

Apologies for the lack of updates. So far, I've had 2 successive losses now at the North Sydney Reserves A Club Championships.

My friend even remarked to me that I look quite haggard in recent weeks, which is not surprising. This week's game against Robert Pike had me totally flat out before the game because of work.

Last week, I also got pulled aside by my boss for a talking to (he was planning to put me on report) in spite of putting in some good work in recent weeks and it's completely knocked me out of my rhythm. He doesn't want me to put in good work, he wants me to put in great work like I used to do.

As a result, I just could not concentrate over the board. Instead, I just played without calculation and that usually invites disaster.

I would like to put some "other" comments as well but I think this should be a "kid-friendly" website. :)

Anyway, up next week is Horst Bleichter and I'm playing Black.

Current results: +2-2=2

I feel like I should be continuing my chess studies but difficulties in maintaining concentration and getting the necessary motivation has been my major stumbling block.

Instead, I've spent my remaining free time, reading some old books on fiction. This week, I finished Agatha Christie's 4.50 From Paddington, James Wyndham's The Chrysalids, Richard Bachman's/Stephen King's The Running Man. With my ebook reader, I've been surprised by how fast I've been reading books of late and it's definitely brought back my love for reading. I find that reading fiction has also allowed me to take time out of any current worries and it's a great way to relax.

North Sydney Club Reserves A Rd 2

In another 2.5 hours, I will be playing against John Pepping (Rated: 1522).

Last week, my board was next to his and from time to time, I glanced at the position. John carried out a pretty nice attack against Rex Simmonds but unfortunately, Rex managed to counter his attack with a tactical combo, winning Rex the game.


There is no doubt that John will be doubly motivated to go for a win and kick my butt tonight. I definitely have to play much much better.

Note To Self: Pay Attention!

Tonight is the start of the North Sydney Club Championships. I didn't really know who I was supposed to play against till my brother-in-law Steven called up to tell me that the pairings were already done last week. Ooops!

Given my lowly rating of 1472, I was expected to be placed in the Candidates B division. Instead, I got bumped up to the Candidates A division. This meant that amongst the 10 players in my group, I am the second lowest rated player - which means that I am forced to play "up" against stronger opponents.

Cool!!!!! :)

My game tonight is against Clive Lane (1552) and I have White. As I don't really have an opening repertoire, I'll just play what comes to mind (my mood). I'd figured that at this level, I don't really need an opening repertoire, I just have to concentrate on tactics, tactics, tactics... :)

I'll report on the game once I'm done.

Cheers

The Ford Memorial Catchup

Apologies for the lack of updates.

The Ford Memorial at Norths has gone underway. Due to some circumstances, I was unable to take part this year.

The greatest shock of the tournament so far was FM Greg Canfell (2315) drawing against Benjamin Cheung (1729). A superb result for young Benjamin.

The young guns are doing very well in this tournament after 3 games played.

Jack Ruan, Oscar Wang and Anton Smirnov are on 3 points each with Benjamin half a point behind followed by Vincent Cheng and Harry Ruan on 2 points each.

My brother-in-law Steven is currently on 2.5 points.

I cannot help but notice that the number of participants for this year's Ford has dropped. Last year, we had 89 participants but this year, it had fallen to around 79 - a fall of 10%.

Big Board Match: North Sydney v St George

The annual "grudge" match was on again. On Tuesday night, the players from St George travelled to North Sydney (Norths) for the annual Big Board match.

The majority of the players from St George turned up and although the games are scheduled to start at 7.30pm, unfortunately, the pairings did not happen until a good 45 minutes later.

In the end, a whopping total of 50 boards was finalised.

My opponent was Graham Allison (1368). There was nothing fascinating about the game. I can only say that I made a few blunders, he made a few mistakes. And in the end, as Tarrasch said,"I was the next to last person to blunder", which was rather unfortunate for Graham and he resigned on move 63.

This was my first OTB game for over a year and I was pretty disappointed with my play despite my win. I got into a winning position and miscalculated... badly and my opponent failed to capitalise on it.

My brother-in-law Steven won his game in his typical 1.d4 opening while my friend's son Dylan won his game in a very nice style with a neat tactical combination by beating a pin with a counter pin.

My board was among the last to finish. In the end, North Sydney emerged with nice little 30-20 victory over St George. This was a slight improvement over last year where North Sydney (Norths) 28.5-19.5 (only to get subsequently clobbered by St George in the return match with 33.5-12.5 *ouch*)

The Grade Matches are due to start in a fortnight's time and I've planned to participate.

I realised that my OTB play has deteriorated beyond comprehension. I seriously need to pull up my socks before then.

U1600 and U1800 Rd3 Results

Tonight is a bit of an unusual situation.

Both of my teams, the U1600 Norths Bear and the U1800 Ryde Eastwood were playing in the same venue at Norths League club.

I had earlier informed my U1800 team captain David French 2 weeks ago that I could not play for them tonight as I would be playing for the U1600 Norths Bear.

As a result, David had to find 2 players to fill in (Lorenzo was away as well) and Dennis Hale and young Dylan Siow-Lee luckily filled in for replacements for Lorenzo and me.

So the U1800 Ryde Eastwood team comprises Brenton Yum, David French, Dennis Hale and Dylan Siow-Lee.

I had a slight shuffle in my U1600 Norths team as well. The players were me, David Stern, Andrew Johnson and Michael Anderson respectively. We were playing the team from Manly (yes, I know how this sounds really strange) comprising Jack Mejzini, Chris Dimock, Gordon Miller and Nina Vayssiere.

My opponent was Jack Mejzini. I was Black and we quickly transposed into the Sicilian Dragon. Jack made a mistake and blundered his Knight (I was shocked that he left his Knight en prise that I spent nearly 10 minutes calculating the effects of taking it). He got 2 pawns for the Knight in return but it was insufficient compensation and I basically traded into a winning endgame.

Boards 2 and 4 were a draw and Board 3 was lost, so the U1600 Norths emerged 2-2.

I was watching the U1800 Ryde Eastwood team but unfortunately, we didn't fare so well, we lost on all boards and ended up 0-4.

An absolute bummer.

NSW Grade Matches 2009

Next week is the start of the NSW Grade Matches.

And it so turns out that I have been placed in a rather unusual/unique situation of having to play for 2 separate teams in separate groups (this is allowed).

I am rostered to play for U1600 Norths Bears for North Sydney and for the U1800 team for Ryde Eastwood.

My schedule is now packed and looks like this:

Tuesday May 26 - U1600 Norths Bears vs Norths Grizzlies
Wednesday May 27 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs Parramatta
Tuesday June 02 - U1800 St George Saints vs Ryde Eastwood
Thursday June 04 - U1600 Parramatta vs Norths Bears
Tuesday June 09 - U1600 Norths Bears vs Manly
Monday June 15 - U1600 Canterbury vs Norths Bears
Tuesday June 16 - U1800 Norths Grizzlies vs Ryde Eastwood
Monday June 22 - U1600 Rooty Hill vs Norths Bears
Wednesday June 24 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs Norths Brown Bears
Tuesday June 30 - U1600 Norths Bears vs St George Saints
Thursday July 02 - U1800 Parramatta vs Ryde Eastwood
Tuesday July 07 - U1600 St George Dragons vs Norths Bears
Wednesday July 08 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs St George Saints
Wednesday July 15 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs Norths Bear Cubs
Wednesday July 22 - U1800 Ryde Eastwood vs Norths Grizzlies
Tuesday July 28 - U1800 Norths Brown Bears vs Ryde Eastwood

In addition, where I am not playing the NSW Grade Matches on Tuesday nights, I intend to play in the North Sydney Winter Challenge which takes place every Tuesday night as well. This event however is non rated unlike the Grade Matches and time controls are 1hr+30 sec increment for each move. Good enough for a good solid rate of gameplay and not too hurried to be in the same vein as a rapid game.

Ryde Eastwood is having severe problems in fielding players in both the U1800 category and U1600 category (there were not enough of available players for the U1600 team so there is no U1600 team from Ryde Eastwood this year). I'm only rated 1540 (and this rating is expected to fall below 1500 when the next list comes out in June) and I've signed up for the U1800 team. *shakes head*

Dismal Performance

I ended up my North Sydney (Norths) Chess club competition, with an absolutely dismal score of +3-4=3.

My final game was lost to Paul Sike (1312) when I ran into time trouble difficulties (first time I lost a game on time) and could not play the best moves. My heartiest congratulations to Paul for a good game. Well played!

This was a very disappointing tournament for me. I know that I'm capable of doing much better but I seem to get myself caught up in complications.

In the last 2 years since I started playing chess, I have to say that this ranks as my worst performance so far.

I will definitely try to do better. My weak points have always been middlegame strategies and tactics and I am still trying to find a balance in time management.

Thankfully, I do not have much time to mope over it.

The NSW Grade matches are coming soon which would take my mind off things. I've also signed up to play for Norths in the Small Boards match vs players from Manly and the week after that, against players from St George.

I would like to thank Norman Greenwood and Rex Simmonds for their help in keeping this tournament running smoothly.

PS: I do realise that finishing a workday 30 minutes before a game and then having to grab dinner and huff it to the chess club to make it there on time is probably not the best thing in the world to prepare your mind for a gruelling 2-3 hour game. So a special thanks to Vladimir for making suggestions on doing things like finding time for a small nap might be beneficial. I've been trying to put it into practice. It has certainly helped.

Ford Memorial Photos

The Ford Memorial has finally concluded. Here are some photos I took tonight from the Ford Memorial Lightning (Unfortunately, with me being an absolute klutz in photography, I suffer from bad handshake so some of the photos are a tad blurred). Apologies to all.

The playing venue

The tireless Norman Greenwood without whom

this tournament would not have been possible

Ford Memorial Tournament Winner Barak Atzmon-Simon

3rd Place Winner Karel Hursky


More photos from the Lightning Tournament:

I would like to thank all my opponents and Norman Greenwood for a wonderful tournament.

Ford Memorial 2008 Final Standings

Here is the Norths Chess Club Centenary Year Ford Memorial Open Tournament 2008

Final Standings

7.5 pts
1. Atzmon-Simon, Barak (2114)
2. Papp, Alexander (1527)
6.5 pts
3. Hursky, Karel P (2017)
4. Luchtmeijer, Ton (2081)
5. Garner, Stephen J (1779)
6. Greenwood, Norman (1491)
6 pts
7. Cook, Roger S (2212)
8. Chek, Adrian (2006)
9. Baterowicz, Mark (1544)
10. Rewais, Sarwat (1827)
11. Bleicher, Horst (1472)
5.5 pts
12. Wechsler, Ian B (1381)
13. Griffin, Hamish (u/r)
14. Liu, Steven Hern (1778)
15. Kordahi, Nicholas (1772)
16. Cheung, Benjamin (1472)
17. Sliwinski, Zdzislaw (1617)
18. Pickering, Anthony (1769)
5 pts
19. Wang, Oscar (1537)
20. Adams, Jonathan (1579)
21. Easterbrook-Smith, Simon (1861)
22. Shan, Caroline (847)
4.5 pts
23. Shan, Jin (1274)
24. Nalbandian, Sarkis (1734)
25. Simmonds, Rex (1520)
26. Pike, Robert D (1508)
27. TanC (1534) - me! :)
28. Smirnov, Anton (1371)
29. Wan, Dennis (1537)
30. Stern, David (1489)
31. Javor, Stephen (1636)
32. Vowles, Justin (1743)
33. Laurie, Robert (u/r)
34. Sparks, Chris J (1532)
4 pts
35. Glissan, Paul (1729)
36. Miller, Gordon (1588)
37. Low, Frank (1575)
38. Jennings, Andrew (Garry) (1263)
39. Anderson, Michael (u/r)
40. Roach, Owen (1458)
41. Carden, Matthew (1267)
42. Pepping, John M (1522)
43. Schuetz, Fred (1340)
44. Davis, Alexander M (u/r)
45. Cook, David (1355)
3 .5pts
46. Tracey, Michael J (1425)
47. Dibley, Shane E (1477)
48. Johnson, Andrew (1500)
49. Moxom, Bob (1234)
50. Roberts, Curt (1545)
3 pts
51. Sike, Paul (1372)
52. Palmer, Paul (763)
53. Waters, Mick (1366)
54. Bennett, George (1045)
2.5 pts
55. Tomas, Tom (1629)
56. Glerum, John (1275)
2 pts
57. Di-Ienno, Tim (u/r)
1 pt
58. Nalbandian, Edward (u/r)
59. Mejzini, Jack (1616) - withdrawn after 4 games - 1 game forfeit
0 pts
60. Matthews, Greg (1248)
61. Lepojevic, Zarko (1776) - withdrawn - 2 game forfeit
62. Muller, Henning (1845) - withdrawn after 1 game

Ford Memorial Update Round 6

Ever felt like a complete dufus?

I just did. Losing tonight to Sarkis Nabaldian (1734) sure did the trick on Round 6 of the Ford Memorial, and does little for my self-confidence.

Apologies to Vladimir and Steven who offered to have a look at my game but I declined as I didn't feel like having any post game analysis. Game was effectively over after 2 bad moves and knowing exactly where you went wrong was even more terrible.

Current score: +3-3=0 with 3 games left to turn the tide. When I first started out, my aim was to get 5 points and right now, that means having to win 2 out of my last 3 games.

Funny, I was in a bad mood so I logged onto freechess.org and proceeded to win 8 rapid games consecutively (hmm... a first for me... but it still didn't erase the self-recriminations from tonight's game).

There are times when you just want to throw your hands up in the arm and ask yourself why you would want to subject yourself to such mental torture. This is one of them.

I guess all chess players have to go through disappointments in order to improve but the journey is long, hard, laden with rocks and success only comes to those who want it bad enough.

I'll probably skip tomorrow's lightning competition at Ryde-Eastwood. I find that playing lightning and blitz chess is actually pulling my game down in the sense that I do not spend enough time working out the variations or analysing the position properly. The net effect is that it's making me make hasty moves. I didn't use to do that and I need to 'unlearn' blitz thinking and refrain from making a move too quickly. I reckon if I slow down, I would probably play a lot better.

Missed Chance To Meet Tibor Karolyi

IM Tibor Karolyi was at the chess club at Manly-Warringah on Sep 29 2008.

I only found out about it too late (yesterday) . Bummer.

Kind of a shame really because I have his book Kasparov's Fighting Chess 1993-1998 and just wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed his book (I'm still looking through his immense annotations even though I bought the book nearly half a year ago). Tibor formerly was Peter Leko's trainer and is here in Sydney under the gracious invite of Brett Tindall and the Sydney Academy of Chess.

Onto other things, in the Ford Memorial at North Sydney, I am now at +3-2=0 with another 4 games to go. My target was to get +5 in this competition and right now, I'm still on course. My brother-in-law Steven is currently on +3-1=1.

In the Bobby Fischer Cup at Ryde-Eastwood, tonight is the last(?) round for me with a +11-6=3 score (a most absymal performance by my standards). My losses going to Ted Wong, Bill Gletsos, Lorenzo Escalantes, Joweynn Lua, my brother-in-law Steven and finally Theodore last week (where I hung a Rook).

Onto better news, my parents-in-laws are coming for a visit in a couple of weeks' time and it'll be great to see them again as it was my father-in-law who introduced me to chess.

Ford Memorial Update

Norman Greenwood has just emailed me the tournament results and news regarding the Ford Memorial. Thanks very much for the updates, Norman!

And I found out that my next opponent will be.... Karel P Hursky (FIDE rated 2013, ACF rated 2017). Whoops.

Just so you know, my ACF rating, by the way, has fallen from 1534 to 1500 according to the latest September ratings. That means that my opponent is rated 517 points above me. Yowzer.

Whatever happens, I'm not going to let the gulf in ratings stop me from having fun!

Hmmm... I wonder if it's possible to deal out this trading card during an actual chess game (see inset)? Just kidding.

My brother-in-law, Steven is meeting his match. A very young girl (10-12 years old?), Caroline Shan, who despite being rated only 847, has already won against her 2 opponents, Jonathan Adams (1579) and Justin Vowles (1743). No pressure. *wink* :)

North Sydney Ford Competition: Musings

I popped by the North Sydney chess club last night for a quick hour or two to see the Ford competition games.

First of all, hats off, I was mightily impressed by Board 1 player, Vladimir Smirnov. A very talented player. His opponent got into a losing position and was gracious enough to resign instead of fighting on as his position was unsalvageable. Vladimir then took his time to discuss the game over with his opponent, highlighting any mistakes as well as strategies and possible variations to improve his position. Top class bloke.