Gyula Sax - Goh Wei Ming, Kevin, Caissa GM tournament October Round 3

After a promising start, I proceeded with a peaceful draw with a good friend of mine, the American FM Erik Kislik who has uncountable IM norms but was unfortunate not to break the required 2400 elo. I then faced GM Gyula Sax with the Black pieces in a rematch of our encounter in the corresponding tournament in March. Then, I managed to play possibly one of my best games in a long time and notched a crucial win to secure the norm. As Sax hardly loses any games in a year, I am sure he will be out to avenge that loss.

I prepared the same variation I played in Round 1 and he clearly came unprepared, having spent an hour on 2-3 moves right after the opening. The time spent proved to be extremely worthwhile as he managed to, and I'm not exaggerating here, refute the Hyper Accelerated Dragadorf over the board.

Pretty convincing stuff and I consider my preparation to be considerably unprofessional. Clearly, GMs do not lose games this way.

I have to move on from this disappointment and prepare for my next game, White vs Attila Groszpeter. Since no one walks into my preparation nowadays, Erik and I were speculating how he will deviate from the lines which he usually plays. To my surprise, he challenged me head on in a 6.Bg5 Najdorf which I fortunately spent a bit of time preparing for.

The game started promisingly when Attila, clearly surprised by my opening choice misplayed the position and I was faced with a couple of winning options after just 10 moves. Thinking for 30 mins and quietly congratulating myself for a job well done, I chose one of the weakest continuations at my disposal and instead had to defend a worse position from then on. Of course, I hardly put up any resistance and lost without a fight after that. Here's the game with light notes.

Antal Tibor Kende - Goh Wei Ming, Kevin, Caissa GM October Round 1

I've completed the Caissa GM tournament and finished with 6/10. I guess it's not a bad score, considering I scored 1.5 points from my first 4 games but it really could have been much better than this. I'll be putting up the games and allow readers to feel the same frustration that I'm going through now and I promise to stop moaning about it soon.

Anyway, round 1 was against a talented 12 year old boy who's rating was 2286 but I saw on the FIDE website that he will be gaining 50 elo points on the next list. This means he is a much better player than his elo suggests and I had a hard time deciding which line to play for a win with Black against him. As I've spent a lot of time looking at Fernandez's article on SCN and Simon Williams book on the Dragadorf, I thought it's a good idea to try to surprise him with it.

Caissa GM Tournament November

I'm currently in Kecskemet midway through the above event, incidentally the same tournament where I made my maiden GM norm in March. It's unlikely for me to replicate my success though, as I have lost 2 games and drawn 1 already and basically needs to win the rest of my games.

All the games were interesting though and I'll probably put them up very soon. Just a small taster, I played 2 (hyper-accelerated) Dragadorf with Black, winning 1 and losing 1 to the legendary Gyula Sax who took revenge for his corresponding loss against me in March. I can add that he basically refuted the entire system and I daresay it's no longer playable now. Not sure if anyone considered it playable in the past though.

I also lost with White against Attila Groszpeter in the 6.Bg5 Najdorf, missing an immediate win after 10 moves and instead contrived to lose in the most pathetic manner possible. I was thoroughly depressed at this point and after posting a half emo status on Facebook, I regained some much needed pride (and elo) by winning with Black against Serbian GM Zlatko Ilincic in a Neo Grunfeld. A few hours ago, I again failed to convert a winning position and drew with the talented Hungarian Antal Tibor Kende.

More to follow.....

DYTM Raja Dr. Nazrin Shah Invitational Masters - Rounds 4 & 5

After losing with White in the previous round, I was naturally disappointed but there was no time to feel sorry for myself as I was due to play against the solid Uzbek GM Tahir Vakhidov with the Black pieces. I decided to be as solid as I can as a draw will allow me to stop the rot. The game indeed ended in a short draw but is interesting in its own way:

In round 5, I was White against Singapore's only homegrown GM Dr. Wong Meng Kong. Work and age are both catching up on him and Meng Kong was clearly insufficiently prepared for this tournament. Which is of course understandable given that a lot of things have been happening in his family recently.

I natually had to try to win to have any chance of making a norm and since Meng Kong plays just about anything, there is little point in preparing deeply. I went for the Scotch only because I have recommended it to my Universiade students but didn't handle it well and was put under pressure by the legendary master.

Quick update

I haven't been posting as frequently as I'll like to mostly due to the horrendous internet connection everywhere. Anyway, I've bungled the Yangon GM tournament really badly, lost 14 elo points and I'm now in Kecskemet preparing for round 2 in the Caissa GM tournament. I just won my first game with Black against Antal Tibor Kende who's live rating is 50 points higher than his current elo. Which is a big pity as it means I require 7/9 yet again.

I'll be putting up the players list and the pairings pretty soon as well as the rest of the KL Masters Games which I've already finished annotating.