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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.

I was on my way back to Perak for the Chinese New Year Holidays when I received received an SMS from Ching Kim Lye from Kedah informing me of the death of Pn Hjh Khatijah Na. For those who don't know she is the mother of the strongest women chess player in Malaysia, WFM Siti Zulaikha(picture). Her brother, FM Johan Iskandar once played for the GilaChess Team in the 2005 Merdeka Team. I had the privilege of meeting Puan Khatijah a few times at tournaments where her children played. She was obviously a woman of great intellect and humor. I was always amazed about her fantastic memory of chess players she has met before - detailing their playing styles and even their weaknesses. She will be greatly missed. Condolences to her family.

Finished 26th position in the PCMM. Things just didn't go well for me this week. My PDA was on the blink. The screen just showed some rubbish characters. I don't know whether it can be fixed or not. So I didn't get any practice done on the PDA. That's no excuse though. I played some really horrible games and lost my first game getting back-rank mated and lost my last game blundering my Queen away. Anyway congratulations to the winner Anas and also 2nd place winner Hamdan. I spoke to Hamdan to congratulate him but he was modest saying all his wins were 'lucky'. Check out the full results at GilaChess.Com On a positive note, I got to try out posting blog entries direct from my handphone to this blog page without any problems. It seemed the posts appear almost instantly. Will be using this facility more often to do 'live' photo blogging. One disadvantage though is every post must be accompanied with one picture. Oh well, I can live with that. It costs around RM 0.40 to post one blog entry using my DiGi prepaid account.

3 pointers

Anas

Nur Shazwani

Zarul Shafiq

Abdullah Che Hassan

Fariz

Balendran

That's the Tosai I had.Got a look at the player's list: Anas, Nur Shazwani, Zarul Shafiq, Adbdullah Che Hassan, Zarul Shazwan, Balendran, Alia, Abd Rahman, Abd Shukor, Afiq, Aishah, Alijendar Ober, Izz are the top seeds.I'm seeded 19.Got into a back rank mate and lost my first round. All the top seeds won.

Top seed is anas. Izz and abdullah che hassan in picture. Blogging this live from my 3 year old nokia 7650. Wonders of technology !

Sitting at the restoran nasi kandar just across wilayah complex.Having teh tarik and tosai waiting for round 1 to start.Since this is the 2nd day of Chinese New Year it looks like I'm one of only 2 chinese here. The Foudzi family (Siti, Johan, Kamal) is not coming with last minute cancellation.

In case you are wondering why my Google advertisement has a dog in it, it's because today is Chinese New Year and it's the Year of the Dog. Good to see that the American based company recognize this Chinese celebration too. Here is the logo from Google China http://www.google.cn. On a chess related note, Google advertisement (Google Adsense) has helped pay for my webhosting for GilaChess.com. Thank you Google and Happy Chinese New Year everybody!!!

My preparation for the weekend tournament last Sunday was a mess. Slept late, arrived late, and suffered terribly from lousy time management. Surprisingly I didn't do worse than the last allegro held at the same place. I finished a lucky 13th place - up one position from my last allegro. There were 3 games where I paid the price for bad time management. - Round 2 vs Kamaluddin Yusof (I had a winning position but had to draw because there was only 1 minute plus left) - Round 4 vs Rabani (eventual champion - in a totally even position everything went downhill in the mutual 2minutes time scramble) - Round 5 vs Low Jun Jian (winning middlegame but just couldn't convert to a winning endgame because I was left with 2 minutes - agreed to a draw) The next day (Monday), I was really tired and just stayed at home and slept. Didn't even update GilaChess.com with the allegro results as I usually do. Anyway I will post the results with full photos before this weekend. No Chess for 3 days but I'm back to my short 5-10 minute training with my coach - Mr IPaq the PDA.

Read this article on Karpov School of Chess in Kansas. It seemed that the school spent a whole bunch of money bringing in former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to Kansas and went broke as a result. Now they are selling their building in which they are housed to stay alive. And I thougt chess people were supposed to be intellectuals.

Ok. It's time to evaluate the success of my One Week Chess Preparation Plan: 1. Tactics: Moderate success as I only spent 5-10 minutes a day. I did see a marked improvements in games where I won with tactics. 2. Online Conditioning: Failure. Only played games on Friday online using 2 minute time controls. My game against Kamaluddin was drawn where I was winning. Reason being: I only had 1 minute plus. Drew another winning game vs a junior in Round 5 because I didn't have time again. 3. Rest: Failure. Slept late at 3.30 am the night before because I was preparing some chess CDs to be sold. Woke up at 10am and was lucky that I arrived late for the first round but in time to play to win. What a messy start. 4. Openings: Success. Kamaluddin fell right into a prepared variation. Though I did not gain a huge advantage but it was a good feeling playing familiar moves. 5. Have fun: This I had a lot. Met new friends like George Hew who brought along his two sons to play. I also met chess friend Yusof Yasnain and Ricky Wong at the tournament. Sad to see the ever-friendly Anthony Tan and his son, Francis absent from the tournaments nowadays. It was through Anthony I got to know so many chess friends. I am very sure that long time use of Pocket CT-Art and Pocket Encyclopedia Of Middlegame will be beneficial for my chess as I do not have a coach. Neither do I have time to attend any sort of chess classes. My PDA has become my chess coach !! Good to see new faces and especially new families like the Hews taking part. This is indeed good for local chess. Chess events should be social events as well as friendly competition.

The local chess scene is very popular seeing now that parents are actually encouraging their children to participate in this mind sport. I remember a time when my dad just didn't approve of the time I spent on chess during my school days. Things are so different today. As an example, the CAS tournament pre-registration for this weekend allegro is full!! All 125 places are already taken as of today. Those who have not pre-registered may still have a chance by taking the place of those registered players who don't turn up on Sunday before 9.30am at The Chess Network (Wilayah Complex, 2nd Floor). RM5 late penalty will be charged. Category 1 Entry Fee: RM 15 (CAS Members) and RM 25 (Others); and Category 2 Entry Fee: RM 10 (CAS Members) and RM 20 (Others).

Just an update on point no 1 of my one week plan for the coming CAS tournament. 1. Tactics: Many advice from the net and some strong players say that tactics training is a sure way to boost chess performance. Now the problem is what tools to use. Will use Renko chess tactics puzzle for this on a daily basis. Have to see if I can copy this tactics exercises to my PDA so I can practice during my daily commute to work. I didn't find out and was just plain lazy to figure out how to include Renko Intensive Chess Tactics exercises into my PDA so instead I used Pocket CT-Art by Convekta. It's an excellent program but I wish I had more time to use it. At the moment I used it during my commute to and from work on the LRT (trains). I have to admit some of the puzzles were hard to solve. As a result, I overshot and missed my intended train station on many occasions and got to work late.

I was surprised to find this chess blog is now ranked no. 3 in Technorati in terms of most "authority" in the Chess category. Of course this latest ranking has to be taken with a grain of salt but it's a nice feeling to be top 3 in something :) Link to the above page

I'm testing out posting viewable games on this blog. The first game I've selected is from the Closet Grandmaster blog. Apparently he is not only an active chess blogger but a pretty good chess player himself. Here is his game played in the current Queensland International Chess, New Zealand. For a full game comment go here

Last month it was sad to see Malaysia being humbled by our Singaporean neighbours for the 5th time in a row (probably more than that but I can't get the results before year 2000). It's also sad to see our local chess websites not doing too well these days. I still maintain my 'hobbyist' Malaysian Chess Portal but lately have less time to update it. I used to steal some time from my lunch hour at the office to do the updates but my office has blocked access to certain websites. Sadly, gilachess.com was one of them. So nowadays I have to update the news after working hours at the cyber cafe. It's lucky that we still have Ching Kim Lye and Vickneswaran helping me we the chess postings. Anyway, the other major local website like Zugzwang.com run by Hafiz Shafruddin is down. It seems like his domain name and website has expired. Can't blame him because he is busy with studies and probably has less time to maintain his excellent Malaysian Chess website. Another major website down was CAS (Chess Association of Selangor) at http://cas.com.kg. It's been down for half a year now with a database error message. This leaves only 3 major local chess websites in Malaysia which are:

The Chess Network MCF official website

Penang Chess Association

GilaChess my website Another sad note is that the weekly column from The Malay Mail column on chess written by Eddie Chua has been discontinued. The only chess column left in Malaysia is from The Star by Quah Seng Sun which appears every Friday fornightly.

Here's my plan in getting ready for the coming CAS tournament. I have only one week to prepare! 1. Tactics: Many advice from the net and some strong players say that tactics training is a sure way to boost chess performance. Now the problem is what tools to use. Will use Renko chess tactics puzzle for this on a daily basis. Have to see if I can copy this tactics exercises to my PDA so I can practice during my daily commute to work. 2. Conditioning: Botvinnik once asked his seconds to blow cigarrete smoke to his face to condition himself in actual tournament conditions. Although I'm sure the CAS tournament will not allow smoking of any kind I will condition myself in playing bullet (1 or 2 minutes) chess on the net. Why? In the allegro, when you are down to 3 minutes it's very hard to switch gears and play fast. I've ruined countless games because of this. 3. Rest: I never get proper sleep the night before the tournament. This time I will force myself to sleep early. 4. Openings: I know I study way too much. However it's a waste as many of the time used does not help in over the board play. Have to understand the fundamental ideas of the openings instead of remembering variations. So this means going back to the drawing board and choosing carefully the openings that are suitable for me. 5. Have fun: I know I have been taking the results too seriously several years back and felt really 'destroyed' everytime I lose. Now I'm used to it and don't mind losing a hard fought game. Wish me luck...

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CAS will organise her first event of the year on 22nd Jan (Sunday) at "2nd Floor, Wilayah Complex, KL". This 1-day event will commence from 10 am (Rd 1). 2 categories i.e. Category 1 for those who have NationalRating of at least 1400 points and unrated Adult; while Category 2 is created exclusively for unrated Under-18 players and those with National rating less than 1400. If you are interested to join this event, please send your Name and Category to chessmate@cas.com.kg and CC a copy to tsepin@gmail.com Category 1 Entry Fee: RM 15 (CAS Members) and RM 25 (Others); and Category 2 Entry Fee: RM 10 (CAS Members) and RM 20 (Others). All pre-register names must make payment by 9.30am on tournament day. Any walk-in registration will be charged RM 5 EXTRA as late penalty. There is 10 prizes for each category. So, 20 players will be receiving prizes "with a total prize fund of RM 1,250" at the end of the day besides getting a chance to flex their muscles after the year end holiday break. Click

Didn't have much time to post but I just feel great that my chess website GilaChess.com can pay for it's own webhosting for the 2nd year in a row. The money comes from ads served by Google on the website. Also thanks to the other GilaChess webmasters like Ching Kim Lye and Vickneswaran who have been tirelessly updating the news there. It was a great 2005 particularly with 2 big international tournaments :- Malaysian Open 2005 and Zonal 3.3. New year resolutions for GilaCHess? Yeah, I would very much like to improve the contents of GilaChess and place more instructional materials. Most of the content on GilaChess is on local chess tournament results and pictures. So now the focus for 2006 is to include more "meaty" contents such as chess improvements, computer chess etc.