FM Daniel Chan - 2 National Titles in 2 days! - by Junior Tay

FM Daniel Chan capped an extremely successful weekend by becoming double National Champion in the space of 2 days. By tying with IMs Enrique Paciencia and Steven Kim Yap with 7.5/9 in the National Blitz, he emerged National Blitz Champion on Saturday. Now we know why his Playchess.com handle is appropriately named "Blitzchamp".

        FM Daniel Chan with his National Blitz Champion trophy

On Sunday, he outpaced a National Rapid Championship field comprising IMs Enrique Paciencia, Lim Yee Weng and FM Tin Jingyao to finish 1 point ahead of Jingyao with 8/9

Daniel essaying the Hungarian Defence (Thanks to IM Jovan Petronic for this pic)

Daniel has sent us two games from the event.

Firstly, a critical game in which Daniel outfoxed National Coach IM Enrique Paciencia by plunging the latter into complications just when the latter was about to get a nice comfy grip on the c file.

Daniel made short work of Derek Lim in the following miniature though he pointed out that the latter could have equalised with an audacious King stroll on move 18.

NM Olimpiu Urcan and IM Goh Wei Ming had opined that digital timers should be used for National Blitz events and yellow/red cards be issued for players making infringements such as smashing the clocks around. I would probably be one of the first to get a yellow card for losing my cool and lambasting an opponent (during and after the game) who made constant and incredible 'drag the clock to his own side of the board' clock slaps  (+ scattering the pieces) causing me to lose time one queen and 2 bishops up (and losing on time in the process). Of course, the right thing to do is to grab the clock and make a claim for illegal move but in the heat of the moment, the emotional mode overrode the logical one. In any case, all these problems with clocks and errant behaviour are avoided come October 27th when the new National Blitz (and Rapid) Champion and 119 other qualifers (including a few other Singaporeans) compete in the World Mind Games Candidates online together with  ELO 2550 and above GMs. Do show up to watch on playchess.com (Emanuel Lasker Arena) at 10pm if you're not competing in the SCF Training League.