2013 Asian Continental Championships - Part 2

After a thoroughly forgettable round 4, I was paired against Emmanuel Emperado from the Philippines. Emmanuel has beaten 2 strong GMs in the first 2 rounds which shows that despite his relatively low rating (2313), he is certainly not to be trifled. Indeed, the opening was a ferocious Winawer Poisoned Pawn where he did the manly thing and took my g7 pawn:

A fortunate win but one that pushed me up the standings and made up for the half point that was dropped in round 4.

In round 6, I had the White pieces against Indonesia's number 1, Megaranto Susanto. We have each won a game in our previous battles and I was certain round 3 would be equally hard fought. However, I never expected THIS hard:

Megaranto was not at his best (certainly not from the opening anyway!) and it was slightly disappointing to have allowed this game to slip through my fingers but the game was nonetheless highly enjoyable.

This game took 6.5 hours and 132 moves, a record for me and I was of course exhausted after the game. At the same time, I was also ready for a fight in my next game against Mongolian GM Batchuluun Cegmed. What transpired however was my most embarrassing loss in an international event, ever.

What a terrible way to lose! After showing Junior the game, he did a search on the databases and told me that some big names such as Caruana and Van Wely have lost exactly the same way before. My wife told me that this may be the prelude to an eventual 2700 rating since I'm following the footsteps of such big names! 

Things went from bad to worse when I proceeded to lose a quick game in hari-kiri fashion against veteran Filipino IM Ronald Bancod and by the last round, I was only playing to save as many elo points as I can and hopefully sneak a prize by finishing in the top 50. True to form, the game was another long drawn affair, lasting 5.5 hours and featured yet another horrendous blunder:

I finished 37th and among the prize winners despite losing 8 elo points. Admittedly I was not at my best as this is my first tournament in 2013 played in classical time control but it arguably could have gone worse than this. In any case, it felt satisfying to get a few reasonably decent games under my belt. 

My next tournament would be the KL Invitational Masters, a 10-player round robin event before the Asian Indoor Games which is without question, the big one. Going into my 6th year with KPMG, it is always going to be a tough ask to find time to train but I've long accepted this to be part and parcel of an amateur chess player in Singapore. Hopefully, I will get to play some good chess and if I do, you can expect to hear it first on this site!