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| Monkey with Hua Hin in background |
Hua Hin, Thailand will host the 22nd Bangkok Chess Club International Open from April 13th to the 21st, 2025.
In contrast to last year's stunning setting at the Sheraton Hua Hin on Hua Hin Beach, the 21st BCC Open will take place on the "River of Kings" at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Riverside Hotel in Bangkok.
Sunday, April 13, 2025, will mark the beginning of the first round. Each day leading up to Monday, April 21, 2025, will see a single round.
Additionally, there will be an open blitz championship with a two-night final and qualifying rounds.
By December 15th, the rules of the tournament will be out in the public, and January 1st, registration will be open.
Carlsen's Suggested World Chess Championship Format
From Chess.om article aabout Magnus thoughts on the World Championship and his lack of motivation:
Magnus Carlsen proposes a World Chess Championship format that incorporates shorter time controls and a knockout or multi-game match structure:
Carlsen's suggestions are rooted in his personal preference for faster-paced chess formats and his diminishing interest in the traditional classical format. While some share his views, others advocate for preserving the traditional long time controls of classical chess, arguing that they represent the purest form of the game.
It is important to note that Carlsen has explicitly stated that his suggestions are not intended to pressure FIDE to change the format, but rather reflect his personal preferences.
This quite rightly splits people who oppose and support Carlsen's idea.
Me? I think the separation of time control is good enough. We should have a clear
It's ok; like 98% of the viewers and fans will be watching the games live on the stream.
As a chess blogger and fan watching the World Chess Championship live stream, there are several key elements I want to see in the video and website feeds:
Real-time Moves: Watching the moves as they happen, with the ability to rewind and review critical moments. Many channels already do it, including the official FIDE, Chess.com, and content creator channels.
Renowned Commentators: Hearing insights from well-known chess commentators like GothamChess, Hikaru, Anna Cramling, Agadmator (Antonio Radić), and Chessbase India (Sagar Shah), who provide in-depth analysis and entertaining commentary.
Player Insights: Commentary that includes background information on the players, their playing styles, and their previous encounters.
Live Chat: Engaging with other viewers through live chat to share thoughts, predictions, and reactions in real time.
Q&A Sessions: Not just the usual interviews of Ding and Guikesh after their game but opportunities to ask questions to the commentators or even the players during breaks.
Post-Game Analysis: Detailed breakdowns and reviews of each game after it concludes.
Player Interviews: Pre-game and post-game interviews with the players to get their thoughts and strategies.
Historical Context: Providing context on the significance of the match and its place in chess history.
Subtitles and Dubbing: Offering commentary and subtitles in multiple languages to cater to a global audience on the main streams from YouTube and Twitch.
Lao Tsu said that if you give a hungry man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
Sure chess engines can show you the best move of a position and help you win if you knew that move (you eat for that day) but chess engines cannot teach you why that move is good and how you can make good moves like that for the rest of the game. That falls in the realm of a good chess coach that will hammer in the foundation, good practices, relevant exercises for training etc.
No AI can teach chess yet. What we need is a good Chess LLM that can mimic the function of an expert chess coach. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude etc are general AI chat bots that returns back intelligent answers based on a given prompt by the human. We have specialised LLMs like Suno for creating music, Mid Journey for creating realistic as well as artistic graphics and pictures. We even have LLMs that can generate realistic videos.
There is Chess LLM and they are not here yet.
The above 2 minute paper about Google Deep Mind is impressive and certainly is the starting steps to seeing an actual AI Chess Coach. At the moment it is more a strong analysis maching like a chess engine but the way it categorise positions line "Long Term Sacrifice", "Colour Weaknesses", and hundreds of other categories makes it more than an engine meaning it mimics understanding why a position is good or the opposite.
Again to emphasis this is still not an Chess LLM that can be used for chess coaching.
The main reason Chess LLM are not here yet is the cost and huge computation power to be invested. So far no company has decided to do this yet. The 2 minute paper is the closest. It is more an analyrical engine than a teacher.
All these AI system rely heavily on training data. This is different from a knowledgebase. For example a chess knowledgebase will be:
This knowledge is often hard-coded or stored in specific formats optimized for quick access during gameplay or analysis.
Training data for a chess LLM, on the other hand, would be much broader and less structured. It would include:
Of course one would ask : What about copyright? You can't just take a book like "How to reasses your chess" by Jeremy Silman and feed it to the AI to learn.
That would be what a machine learning programmer would do. Take all these literature and feed it to the AI for learning. That's the key point : "It's for learning".
And it's not going to regurgitate facts and direct quotes from all the data that AI has taken in.
The copyright problem has been addressed in other AI systems like Suno. Suno was fed tons of actual popular songs or artists so that it can produce music. Of course, many musicians are up in arms over this as some of the songs very closely resemble their style and voice. Same goes for Mid Journey in image generation. Lots of real photos were fed in as training data and some photographers even tried suing when they saw AI photos produced that were similiar with their original pictures. Most of the legal cases were dismissed and these AI companies are still thriving today.
AI chess coach can cover many other areas like psychology, physical preparedness and technical data during an actual chess game.
Psychology: AI Chess coach constantly monitors the human player's thoughts like asking the player how he or she felt during, before and after the game recording and tagging those thoughts to all the individual games it recorded.
Data during game: The time taken for each move made, the evaluation for each position, etc.
Physical data: How much sleep a player had daily, heart rates during the day via health smart bands/watches.
Other data like food and diet etc.
These are things a human chess coach might do but definitely not this level of detail.
Realistically, let's take a typical talented junior player aspiring to become FM, IM or GM. He or she would be training 4 to 8 hours daily. They would have one or more coach which they would spend 1 to 4 hours a week to get advice and directions and things to focus on their daily traning. If it was an AI coach, it would not be limited to that 1 to 4 hours weekly but as long as you want. And to top it off the daily training can be monitored and dynamically changed real time to suit that student.
So in the end we would have an AI that knows chess positions as well aspects of the human student it is training at an almost unimaginable level.
So will we ever see the emergence of this futuristic AI chess coach? I think so. It's just a matter of time.
At 15 years old, Poh Yu Tian wins the Malaysian Open, becoming the first Malaysian and youngest player to do it.
This victory is very noteworthy, given the presence of seasoned Grandmasters like Deepan Chakravarthy, Nguyen Duc Hoa, and Darwin Laylo.
Pangilinan made strong showing making it to the last round by defeating two Grandmasters, Duc Hoa and Deepan.
In a tight Queen and Bishop conclusion in his final game versus Poh, Pangilinan eventually conceded a loss following a botched pawn sacrifice.
Poh Yu Tian did not despair even though knowing full well that there are no norm possibility from the get go and still played with energy and determination - the mark of a champion!
Why is this important:
A turning point in Malaysian chess history, the 2024 Malaysian Open featured Poh Yu Tian's developing skills. This historic victory can only inspire future young hopefuls to also strive in a promising future for the sport in Malaysia.
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Hamid Majid has been appointed as the Chief Arbiter for the upcoming World Chess Championship match between Ding Liren, the reigning champion from China, and Gukesh Dommaraju, the challenger from India.
This remarkable accomplishment deserves our heartfelt congratulations. Since the 1980s, Hamid has been a stalwart in the chess community, organizing both local and international tournaments. Of course not to mention his 19 years of running one of the biggest chess festival in Asia - the Malaysian Chess Festival.
For me, I met Hamid in 1999 when I just started my chess blog. Back then the basic thing was to get local chess results aand pictures to post. It wasn't easy. There were no chess-results.com or even chess websites !! So my "please sir can I have the chess results" was always graciously answered by Hamid.
It may be an easy ask but many local organisers weren't as kind. We got chased out of the tournament hall once for copying the chess results on paper because our credentials as "bloggers" did not mean anything at that time (and I still it still means nothing todaay :) )
Anyway in later years Hamid was alwaays helpful when this irritating blogger would always ask for the same thing - results. He would tell his arbiters "Give him what he wants".
Later I got invited to be part of the team to handle the tournament website starting from the 2nd Malaysian Open and have been part of the "team" ever since. I was impressed with how Hamid people handling especially when he only sometimes gets an experienced team. Things go wrong but the way he handled it was exceptional.
So yes, I think they've chosen the perfect man for the World Chess Championship 2024!
I consider myself an amateur. Commented on Facebook with a blanket statement that for chess professionals chess is expensive but relatively cheap for amateurs. Let's just take a case study of entering the coming Johor Open in Jan 2025.
Grand Total: RM 2270-2510
So I guess it depends on WHAT you would consider amateur level. For me, the Johor Open would not be a good fit since I would have to win 11th - 15th place to break even in entrance fee alone and with a cost approaching RM 2500 it is certainly costly overall. So the motivation should be other than winning prize money. But that's just me, I can't think of any motivation for a player my level. What do you think ?
A disclaimer here: I have never been to the Johor Open at least not in this new format. Been to it several times before Covid but the "new" version is totally different so I can't comment on how I like it or not.
Let's look at last year's entry. The Amateur section had 55 players taking part and 35 of them are Malaysians.
Visit Johor Chess for more info about the Johor Chess Open
The Malaysian Open 2024 is shaping up to be a thrilling and highly competitive tournament! Leading the pack with 4.5 points is IM Poh Yu Tian with GM Nguyen Duc Hoa.. The Vietnamese players are also making a strong impression, with GM Nguyen Duc Hoa and GM Nguyen Van Huy both securing spots in the top four, highlighting the prowess of Vietnamese chess.
The diversity of the tournament is also interesting, with participants from Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, India, Singapore, China, and Australia. Even with the brutal clashes there is still international representation for the event. Young talents like FM Chan Kim Yew and FM Lye Lik Zang from Malaysia are making their mark, promising a bright future for chess in Malaysia.
It’s also encouraging to see women making their presence felt in the top 20, with WGM Priyanka Nutakki and WGM Gomes Mary Ann demonstrating the growing strength of women in competitive chess.
The competition remains tight, with many players having 3.5 or 4 points, making the next few rounds crucial in determining the final standings.
Top 20 after 5 rounds so far:
| Rk. | Name | Rtg | FED | Pts. | |
| 1 | IM | Poh Yu Tian | 2430 | MAS | 4.5 |
| 2 | GM | Nguyen Duc Hoa | 2343 | VIE | 4.5 |
| 3 | GM | Laylo Darwin | 2397 | PHI | 4 |
| 4 | GM | Nguyen Van Huy | 2360 | VIE | 4 |
| 5 | IM | Kushagra Mohan | 2411 | IND | 4 |
| 6 | FM | Nguyen Quoc Hy | 2302 | VIE | 4 |
| 7 | FM | Chan Kim Yew | 2247 | MAS | 4 |
| 8 | GM | Deepan Chakkravarthy J. | 2408 | IND | 3.5 |
| 9 | IM | Liu Xiangyi | 2368 | SGP | 3.5 |
| 10 | Gong Sunle | 2226 | CHN | 3.5 | |
| 11 | IM | Jin Yueheng | 2320 | CHN | 3.5 |
| 12 | IM | Nitin S. | 2347 | IND | 3.5 |
| 13 | FM | Winkelman Albert | 2251 | AUS | 3.5 |
| 14 | WGM | Priyanka Nutakki | 2292 | IND | 3.5 |
| 15 | Jiang Haochen | 2326 | CHN | 3.5 | |
| 16 | FM | Lye Lik Zang | 2269 | MAS | 3.5 |
| 17 | FM | Pangilinan Stephen Rome | 2174 | PHI | 3.5 |
| 18 | AGM | Vignesh B | 2198 | IND | 3.5 |
| 19 | IM | Badmatsyrenov Oleg | 2401 | FID | 3 |
| 20 | WGM | Gomes Mary Ann | 2298 | IND | 3 |
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| IM Poh Yu Tian |
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| IM Yeoh Li Tian |
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| Ernest, Yek Zu Yang |
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| FM Chan, Kim Yew |
Like a caveman I arrived at Cititel last month for the #MYchessFestival meeting confused about where the hotel parking space has gone. As ...
