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Got my second hand PDA. It's the Dell Axim X5.

Price: RM 390 (USD 104)

RAM: 32Kb

Extra peripheral: 256Mb SD card + WiFi card I'm pretty happy after testing it for a couple of days. The battery life is twice that of my previous PDA (HP IPaq 1940). The only thing I'm not happy is the size. It's huge compared to my sleek IPAQ 1940. Take a look.. Anyway, with my current budget I can't really complain. As a chess training tool, I've discovered that the PDA is invaluable (at least for me). I can 'train' during my commute to work on the LRT trains (about 40 to 60 minutes daily). I can also do my chess postings via PDA since it has a WiFi card. Now all I have to do is reinstall my chess related software such as:

Pocket Fritz 2

Pocket CT-Art

Pocket Chess Strategy

The first international open chess tournament for ONGC Cup will be held in Hyderabad, India from 25th February to 5th March 2006. The event carries a prize pool of over 18000 US Dollars and it will offer many opportunity for chess players to make GM and IM norms. This is the first tournament organised by the Chess Players Association of India. So it's a tournament organised by chess players for chess players. Download tournament details (Adobe PDF format) Related post at GilaChess

In about a month's time the most prestigious Scholastic Chess tournament for Malaysia will take off. It's the National Age Group(NAG). NAG has been steadily gaining more popular ever since the National Sports Council (MSSM) dropped chess as an annual event some years back. That was truly a controversial decision as the chess event was gaining popularity with many parents and teachers recognizing the beneficial side of chess on young minds. Luckily the National Age Group organised by the MCF sort of acted as a replacement for annual National Council Chess. Recently, the National Sports Council reinstated chess as one of the sporting events - and quite timely too as chess is already an event at the SEA games. It would be terribly embarassing and illogical if chess was not recognized as a sporting event at national level. Despite this, the National Age Group has grown and has become a popular annual event for many students. This year, the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM) Indoor Sports Arena was chosen as bigger venue was needed. The Sports Arena can support up to 500 participants. I will be there to cover the event as much as I can. Details about the National Age Group.

Disaster!! I can't repair my faulty Ipaq 1940. The screen is dead for no reason. Anyway, it's a big blow to me as I can't carry on my "chess training". No more exercises, puzzles and sparring partner. Since getting a new PDA is too expensive I think I'll get a similiar 2nd hand model as a replacement for the time being. Already looking at an older PDA but has all the features I need for chess :- A Dell Axim X5. A big advantage is it's compact flash slot making it possible for me to take the pictures from my camera Compact Flash card and transfer the pictures directly into the PDA. Then, I could post pictures online using PDA WiFi card. This is convenient as then, I would not require the use of a PC. This is a big help to me when posting chess reports to GilaChess.com. Another plus is the battery life is double that of my previous Ipaq PDA. It's old and bulky by today's standard but I am not a gadget freak :)

One of the biggest problems that I face is choosing a decent opening to play as White and Black. Even Grandmaster and Novices must figure out what openings to be part of their "Opening Repertoire". In the past I've played King Indian Defence (KID) for the Black side and employing KIA (King Indian Attack) as White because they have similiar strategies. This was in line with the ideas and suggestions presented by Raymond Keene in his book "Opening for you" or some title like that. GM Keene recommends the KIA and KID because it does not require rote learning or memorisation and more on general understanding and strategy. Recently however, I rarely play KIA or KID. I guess the main reason is that I found there is more fun playing 1.e4 as White and Benko Gambit type positions vs 1.d4 as Black. I think I will follow the strategy used by GM Drazen. Fun and Serious Opening Repertoire For example, he plays the "fun" Centre Counter/Scandinavian vs "weaker" players (less than ELO 2400) and the "serious" Sicilian Najdorf against stronger opposition. So the plan now is to find 2 openings vs d4 and 2 openings vs e4. One fun and one serious. I already have my "fun" repertoire so I will research more serious openings :)

With a total prize fund of RM 5000, the 2 day Temerloh Open in Pahang will have the highest first prize amounting RM 1000! Details can be found here.

I am enjoying a break from work in my hometown, Teluk Intan, Perak. Just went for a morning walk with my parents at 6.30am.No chess. No computers. No internet. I'm posting this from my handphone. It's going to be a quiet month this February before the chess fever starts again in March. So I'm going to take it easy this month and plan out the new chess sites I'll be launching soon. Good luck to those who are preparing hard for the National Closed and National Age Group in March.The pictures is taken from my garden swing at 8.30am.