Currently these are the list of chess blogs in Malaysia (and the number is growing!):-

1. 2010 Chess Odyssey
2. Stonemaster
3. Ng6
4. hairulovchessmaniacs
5. GiLoCatur’s Blog
6. Got chess got it all
7. Firey Rook
8. GilaChess Blog
9. Mamak Chess
10. KUDO CATUR
11. Chess Malaysia
12. TERENGGANU blog
13. First GM
14. I dont know
15. My Chess Life
16. SIFU.mycatur
17. Justin Chess
18. CentralChessClub
19. Excel Chess
20. SYEDCHESS
21. Chess News
22. Chess is Chess
23. Wise Pawn
24. Peter Long on Chess
25. SELANGOR CHESS
26. Danial’s Blog
27. MCF blog
28. Marcus Yeoh Chess Blog
29. Kelab Catur Setia Kuantan
30. Chess Stories
31. My Chess Diari

That’s a total of 31 blogs that I know of. I am sure the list is bigger. Anyway one of the reasons Malaysia has so many chess blogs is the level of interest for the game has grown by leaps and bound. Almost every week there is a chess tournament being held.

Special Prize

Board List

That’s my main chess blog. Just updated it to the latest version of WordPress 2.7.1 and also changed the template.

It’s been looking drab for over a year. I think the new look is neater.

Our experienced coaches are passionate in teaching enthusiastic juniors. 

The objective of the scholarship is to support the chess industry train enthusiastic chess players to excel and be competitive internationally.  

Panel of Coaches consist of:

• International Master (IM) elect Lim Yee Weng

He was one of the youngest national men’s champion at the age of 14 and went on to obtain his IM title after becoming the first Malaysian to achieve a 2600 GM rating performance in the Malaysian Open 2008. Currently practicing law after obtaining his law degree from Australia in 2004 and is presently coaching chess players professionally and passionately.

• Schools and National Team Coaches

Closing Date  : 31^st December 2008

• Sponsored by management and a group of passionate chess coaches.

• 18 and below only

Please, submit your application to:

Magic Tree Child Development Sdn Bhd

20A, Persiaran Zaaba, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, 60000 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel: 03 – 7727 0817, 012 – 210 5620 (Grace Leong) Fax: 03 – 7727 3672,

Email: magictreekl@gmail.com

• Terms and Conditions Apply.

World Champion Viswanathan Anand is now promoting chess in schools. The world champion with it’s newly formed NIIT MindChampion Academy (NIIT-MCA) is set to promote chess among school children in India.

The project envisages formation of school-level chess clubs whose members would use computers made available to schools by the state government. The NIIT-MCA would provide chess infrastructure to schools. As per the government’s computerisation programme, 1,000 high schools would have adequate facilities for computer learning. By now, 400 of them have already been covered.

Viswanathan Anand formally launched NIIT-MCA to promote chess among children of 400 schools in the state “hoping” that it would soon cover the remaining 600 schools. The function was held at the Indira Gandhi Planetarium, where deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi was the chief guest. Human resources development minister Hari Narayan Singh and junior minister for information technology Anil Kumar were also present.

“For me, it is exciting. I dreamt of taking chess to states where it has not been played and also to rural areas,” Anand said, adding: “The launch of NIIT-MCA in Bihar is exciting. Chess helps academic performance, computers help academic performance and also chess. We need to use technology for chess and life.”

Full article from Times of India

So I decided with 3 other blogger buddies to join forces and blog about the event. The result is one of those collaborative blogs which I’m taking part for the first time in my life.

The experience is fantastic as the international traffic coming to the blog is huge. It’s more than any one of my blog or even four of our blogs combined. In this case it’s true that the sum is greater than the parts

Also it must be noted the event has benefited with the free exposure our blog has provided.

Blogs are indeed are great marketing tool. Too bad many chess organisers don’t realise the full potential of it yet.

Irene Kharisma Sukandar is a happy girl after finally attaining her third and final norm for the Woman Grand Master (WGM) title. She now can call herself Woman Grand Master Irene Kharisma Sukandar.

“Of course, I’m happy (to be named Indonesian’s first WGM) and very grateful to God Almighty,” said Irene, adding that she hoped that her achievement will encourage other Indonesian women.

She officially receive her title last week while competing in the Singapore Open chess tournament. Too bad she did not come for the KL Open after that as it would have been nice to do an interview with her.

She attained her norm at the Dresden Chess Olympiad last month and is the first Indonesian women in history to receive FIDE’s highest title for women.

The WGM can cook too!

Irene tryng her hand at cooking at a Japanese restaurant in Malati, Philippines

India emerges as a world chess superpower in the World Youth as they grab 8 medals from the individual section. Second in the number of individual medals collected is China with 6 medals.

Overall champion is India followed by Vietnam in second place and Croatia in third place.

The Malaysian team target of two medals was not achieved and the team ended without collecting a medal. As consolation, our neighbour Singapore did not finish with any medals either. In fact in terms of placing, most of the Malaysians were ahead of the Singaporean in the respective categories (more details on this in another post). Perhaps the Singaporeans did not send their strongest line up.

Still, the World Youth event is a good yardstick to measure our young local talents and how they measure up internationally.

Top five players

World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Open 08
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1			Tran Minh Thang	VIE	0	10,0	0,0
2			Liu Xiangyi	CHN	0	9,0	0,0
3			Liao Yu Hao	CHN	0	8,5	0,0
4			Olamaei Alireza	IRI	0	8,0	0,0
5			Chiang Jonathan	USA	1535	8,0	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Open 10
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1			Duda Jan-Krzysztof	POL	2013	9,5	0,0
2			Xu Yi	CHN	0	8,5	1,0
3			Wang Yi Ye	CHN	0	8,5	0,0
4			Ghosh Diptayan	IND	2041	8,0	0,0
5		FM	Pichot Alan	ARG	1925	8,0	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Open 12
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1			Das Sayantan	IND	2112	9,5	0,0
2			Gordievskiy Dmitry	RUS	2217	8,5	0,0
3		FM	Yang Darwin	USA	2182	8,0	0,0
4			Ynojosa Felix Jose	ENG	2145	8,0	0,0
5			Gagare Shardul	IND	2092	8,0	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Open 14
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1		FM	Vidit Santosh Gujrathi	IND	2356	9,0	0,0
2			Lortkipanidze Nodar	GEO	2135	8,5	0,0
3		IM	Swiercz Dariusz	POL	2478	8,0	1,5
4		FM	Bajarani Ulvi	AZE	2232	8,0	1,0
5		FM	Lagarde Maxime	FRA	2332	8,0	0,5
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Open 16
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1		IM	Adhiban B	IND	2439	9,0	0,0
2		IM	Sethuraman S P	IND	2441	8,0	0,0
3			Debashis Das	IND	2309	8,0	0,0
4			Soors Stef	BEL	2176	8,0	0,0
5			Hansen Eric	CAN	2362	8,0	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Open 18
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1		IM	Saric Ivan	CRO	2516	8,0	0,0
2		GM	Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son	VIE	2567	8,0	0,0
3		FM	Shankland Samuel L	USA	2436	8,0	0,0
4		FM	Ter-Sahakyan Samvel	ARM	2495	8,0	0,0
5		IM	Chirila Ioan Cristian	ROU	2462	8,0	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Girls 08
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1			Abdumalik Zhansaya	KAZ	0	10,0	0,0
2			Zhou Qiyu	FIN	0	8,5	0,0
3			Mammadzada Gunay	AZE	0	8,0	1,0
4			Wang Kelly	CAN	0	8,0	0,0
5			Vu Thi Dieu Uyen	VIE	0	7,5	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Girls 10
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1			Goryachkina Aleksandra	RUS	1899	9,0	1,0
2			Li Zhuoling	CHN	0	9,0	0,0
3			Anastasia Patricks	INA	0	8,0	0,0
4		WFM	Haussernot Cecile	FRA	1882	8,0	0,0
5			Sunyasakta Satpathy	IND	1766	8,0	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Girls 12
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1			Zhai Mo	CHN	2079	8,5	0,5
2			Osmanodja Filiz	GER	1939	8,5	0,5
3			Pratyusha Bodda	IND	1945	8,0	1,5
4		WCM	Medina Warda Aulia	INA	0	8,0	1,0
5		WFM	Rodriguez Rueda Paula Andrea	COL	2047	8,0	0,5
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Girls 14
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1		WIM	Padmini Rout	IND	2235	10,0	0,0
2		WFM	Arabidze Meri	GEO	2182	9,0	0,0
3			Baciu Diana	MDA	2062	8,0	0,0
4		WFM	Nguyen Thi Mai Hung	VIE	2123	8,0	0,0
5			Camacho Chardine Cheradee	PHI	2100	7,5	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Girls 16
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1		WFM	Paikidze Nazi	GEO	2292	9,0	1,0
2		WFM	Kulon Klaudia	POL	2228	9,0	0,0
3		WIM	Tsatsalashvili Keti	GEO	2235	8,0	0,0
4		WFM	Le Hoang Tran Chau	VIE	2041	7,5	0,0
5			Abylkassymova Raushan	KAZ	1834	7,5	0,0
World Youth Chess Championships 2008 – Girls 18
Final Ranking after 11 Rounds
Rk.			Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1
1		WGM	Golubenko Valentina	CRO	2273	9,0	0,0
2			Preethi R	IND	2156	8,0	0,0
3		WFM	Girya Olga	RUS	2332	7,5	0,0
4		WGM	Nemcova Katerina	CZE	2369	7,5	0,0
5			Li Panru	CHN	2126	7,5	0,0

Graffitti left on the giant Knights outside of the entrance of the Stadium for the World Youth Chess Championship 2008. With 73 countries taking part both the Knights are filled with word.

Ok. I left my mark there too

It’s been a long tournament here. I have not been sleeping well but the experience is memorable. I have never seen so many foreign chess players before in my life. Also I learnt some new things in updating websites and valuable shortcuts that will come in handy in the future.

Most of the delegates will be returning home tomorrow. The Malaysian team did remarkably well considering this is an International event and youth tournaments are always tough.

Results being collected and final results being prepared.