Olympiad R9

Malaysia met Andorra this round. Well, it was rather unfortunate that we lost 1.5-2.5, but it's not shocking. Mas may be a strong player, but at the end of the day, his opponent is the one with the GM title, and it stands for something. Mok and Khai Boon again demonstrated the weakness of Malaysian players: openings. Mok played strangely in the Tarrasch, reaching a non-theoretical (if I'm not mistaken) position by the 10th move, and got into a position where I cannot say he has an advantage; in fact, he was probably worse because of his weak c5 pawn. Khai Boon erred when he violated opening principles, costing him a pawn and reaching a completely lost position by the 15th move. Peter did well to win his game.

I guess fatigue is demonstrating itself wholly in the Malaysian team now.

Olympiad R6-R8

R6: MAS-SMR

4-0. Good.


R7: MAS-ICSC

Well, our performance was overall mediocre, let's call it below par. It wasn't a disaster, but definitely not great either. We were more or less evenly matched on the first 2 boards, and had a rating advantage and disadvantage on the last 2. I had predicted a 1.5-2.5 loss, but we got 1-3. Not much difference in terms of match points anyway...

R8: SRI-MAS

I have one question for the Malaysian team:

Was Mas really THAT tired? Or have you guys really gone mad?

You must be kidding me, fielding a player who has not played a rated game in like, 7 years. The only chess he's been playing lately is blitz, and he's no good at it either. He has a peak rating of 1800 on playchess.com, or so I've heard.

Alright, so I was in the midst of writing this, and Greg just won. But that is not going to change what I think. First and foremost, just so we're clear, the fact of the matter is that Greg won just because he was lucky.

Honestly, how much time did you guys spend thinking of this? You fielded a player who has not played a serious game in over 7 years. Even Peter Long, who has been dormant for over a decade until just recently (2 years, which is not exactly 'recent') is not playing up to the standard that he used to have. How much more for Greg? Seriously, what winning chances did you think he had?

Seriously, is it so difficult for Mas to play? It's just a 2016 opponent; a lower rating than his 2085 Hong Kong counterpart. How much trouble did he have winning his R2 game? Yes, maybe it's arguable that his Sri Lankan opponent might be an underrated up-and-coming player, but based on what I see in his rating growth, the absolute maximum real strength I would ever possibly say he has is 2150, assuming his losses against players below 2000 never happened. How much energy do you need to beat a player more than 200 points below your not-inflated rating?

But then again, if we argue that the Sri Lankans are underrated, then it would be suicide to put Greg in anyway.

Now, I understand that it's incredibly tiring to play 8 games in a row; Humans who play proper chess come close to dropping dead at this point. But being experienced players who are playing a game associated with the question, "How many steps ahead can you see?", if you know this is coming, please plan ahead. Make this substitution in R2.

There is a rather high degree of batshit insanity involved when you have your first rated game in almost a decade against a person with a rating equal to yours. If you hope to win, that is.

Well, all this is based on the assumption that Mas was not sick or anything. If he really was sick, then sorry, ignore what I said. But otherwise, really, what were you guys thinking?

And now, for R9, we have Malaysia paired with Andorra. Their 4th and 5th board players are on a downward rating trend. If Greg plays this round, if he plays in the same way he did yesterday, I can only predict a draw for him at best. On the other hand though, neither of his potential opponents have won with black in the tournament...

Olympiad R3-R5

Well, I have things to do on weekends so I didn't really look at the games much, and I don't plan to give stale annotations 4 rounds late. But hey, there's always commentary on performance...

R3: LTU-MAS

Malaysia did great this round. Mas managed a black win against GM Rosentalis. Mok and Peter held their opponents to draws while Khai Boon lost. An incredible performance, considering that we were out-titled and out-rated, and yet, looking at the games, we would have actually won, had Mok seen the win against GM Sulskis. Really a great performance, one where the underdog is the one that was supposed to win!

R4: MAS-SUI

Well, we couldn't really have expected to win this round. On board 1, Mas managed to win a pawn in an endgame against GM Pelletier, but Pelletier proved that it was insufficient with his almost flawless endgame defence, when Mas again missed another win. Interestingly, the game ended in a not-so-well-known theoretical draw where black had only a bishop against a white rook and pawn. Peter held a draw without too much problem, and the other 2 boards lost.

R5: BOL-MAS

We lost 2.5-1.5 to an a team 30 seeds below us. Pathetic.

Well, at least we have a rest day to recover from such a traumatic stumble.

Olympiad R2 HKG-MAS

Well, this round had Malaysia paired with Hong Kong. Needless to say, Malaysia was expected to win. There's not much point annotating in detail since frankly, the Hong Kongers played rather weakly, and besides, it wasn't really my aim to talk about OTB chess when I decided to start this blog. And I don't think most of you guys come to this blog hoping to see tournament updates or read my annotations in the first place.

But anyway...

On B1, Mas' opponent played without a concrete plan; Rather aimless, and based on cheap tricks(9.Ng5, 11.Qb3...), I must say. Mas won this one quite simply.

B2 saw Mok playing some unusual chess, castling kingside earlier than necessary, followed by a h4-h5-h6 advance against an uncastled king. His opponent did not know how to react, and after some tactics(16.b4!,17.Nxb5) white set up a position to drum up an attack against the uncastled black king, eventually being a rook up in the final position. Very nice middlegame play by Mok, although I can't say the same about his opening plan. 0-0 was unnecessarily early, and the h-pawn advance is questionable.

B3 highlighted the main weakness of Malaysian players: the ability to play openings well with a concrete middlegame plan. Khai Boon, with little experience against players from outside Malaysia entered the Sicilian Dragon with a rather dubious move order (4...Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 gives white the option of 6.Nxc6 which is known to be bad for black) and picked a strange plan against the Classical setup:

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 g6 6.Be3 Bg7 7.Be2 0-0 8.Nb3 d6 9.0-0 a6 10.a4 Na5?


This move does not go well with a6, because the pawn on a6 is pretty much useless here. Actually, it's probably better placed on a7 since it needs to cover the b6-square in case of Bb6 ideas. In fact, this tactical and positional possibility is one of the reasons why the Na5 variation of the Rossolimo is not good.

11.e5

What did I say? If 11...dxe5 then 12.Qxd8 Rxd8 13.Bb6 [Sorry. I mean 13.Nxa5]

11...Ne8 12.Nxa5 Qxa5 13.Nd5

In layman's terms (and mine), black is in deep shit.

13...Qd8 14.Bb6 Qd7 15.Be3 Qd8 16.Bb6 Qd7 17.Ba5 Rb8 18.Bb6 e6 19.Ba7 exd5 ½-½?

Incredible. Well, black isn't immediately lost but I think that after 20.Bxb8 dxe5 21.c4 d4 (opening files isn't a good idea when you opponent has more rooks than you) 22.Bf3 eying the d5 square, and a potential target on e5 as well as a queenside majority, white has a great position. Maybe white got cold feet here. It's hard to tell if he's a strong player since the only good move he made was 11.e5, which is somewhat obvious. Perhaps to him, squeezing a win out of this position is very difficult, and hence not worth it since they were the last game to finish, if I'm not mistaken. Who knows, maybe some people in the Hong Kong chess community is grilling him for his dubious call now. Eh, that sounds familiar...

On B4, Peter Long played the same setup as Mas, but with the white pieces. With a strong grip on the d5 square, he opened the position and had a strong pawn on d5, hampering the scope of black's light squared bishop and reducing black's mobility. White proceeded to infiltrate black's position, and emerged a pawn ahead with a continued attack against the black position on move 28. Black sportingly resigned in the final position. I liked this game; white played very simply but took apart his opponent nicely, though his opponent's poor defence contributed to this.

The team played genuinely well this round, but I can't say the same for Khai Boon; he played the opening badly and had no chance to demonstrate his strength in the middlegame. Well, there's still 9 rounds to go.

Olympiad R1 MAS-ENG

Well, let's not talk about the selection process and the fact that our men's team consists of only 4 real players. That can be covered after the dust settles, since I'm sure there will be more exciting things to add following the aftermath of this tournament.

I'm not going to give many evaluative comments; any patzer with Fritz/Rybka/Shredder/whatever can do that. In fact, I'm not going to use an engine to annotate.

B1

Mas,Hafizulhelmi (2422) - Adams,Michael (2728) [C28]

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d3 Nc6 4.Nc3 Na5 5.Bg5 h6 6.Bh4 c6 7.a3 Nxc4 8.dxc4 d6 9.Qd3 Be6 10.Nge2 Be7

So it's more or less theory up to this point:



11.b3

Well, Mas' strongpoint never really was opening theory. This move cautiously, but unnecessarily overprotects c4 and makes queenside castling unfeasible. I think White could make a more productive move than this.

11...g5 12.Bg3 Qa5


13.f3

Not necessary either. Now there are points to attack on both flanks.

13...0-0-0

Reasonable. Black's pawn on c6 is not as bad as white's on f3; and it's obvious (at least with hindsight) that white's king will have to go to the kingside. (See next move)

14.0-0 Kb8 15.Rfb1 h5 16.Bf2

Improving the worst placed piece, and also prophylaxis against a consecutive h4-h3, since white has the option of replaying h4 with h3 himself.

Nd7 17.a4

White had to choose between the a- and b-pawn. I'm not too sure about the advance with the a-pawn: white wants to play a5-a6, since attacking with the b-pawn seems slow, as b5 can be met by c5 if necessary. But on the other hand, if this happened, d5 would be weak, d6 backward and the dark squared bishop would need to find something to do. Black would then have to rely heavily on his kingside attack.

17...Rc8 18.b4

a loss of 1 tempo!

18...Qd8 19.a5 g4


White is in trouble. The reason why f3 turns out to be weaker than c6 is apparent:if the f-pawn goes (and it probably will), white is saddled with the weak e4 pawn. The same can't be said about the c6 pawn. Black also may play f5, though it is unlikely to be necessary. Looking at the attack, black is also faster. White's pawn on f3 is already challenged, and it is very likely to be taken off. Then there are moves like Qg8 followed by f6 or f5, attacking the c4 pawn. The white queen will be overloaded by the defence of white's pawns. White on the other hand, is way too slow.

½-½

I'd presume Black offered the draw as he made the last move. Some Malaysians told me or their peers that Mas should have played on[Alright, I'm lying about the ambiguity; it was just Raymond Siew]. Like the rest who are of sound mind, I think otherwise. Come on, Michael Adams has 300 points on Mas. You don't play to win against a 2700 in a position where you are in deep shit. Don't forget the team has no real reserve players. Is it really a wise idea to "squeeze"(I don't think there is any jargon in chess to describe "pressing for a win when you stand worse") a position for a meaningless extra half point at the cost of your energy which will be needed for the next 10 rounds? Don't forget that the most likely outcome is a loss for white.

I'm sorry, I have nothing personal against you. But when people say incredibly stupid things and pass them off as words of wisdom, I feel an obligation to tell them how wrong they are.


B2

McShane,Luke J (2657) - Mok,Tze-Meng (2416) [A01]

1.b3

Well, it's only reasonable for one to assume that this was white's preparation. What a crude way to prevent the Modern!

1...e5 2.Bb2 d6 3.e3 Nf6 4.g3 Be7

I don't really like this move. It kind of looks like the way a beginner would place his bishop. I would have preferred adopting a KIA setup, with 4...g6 instead, having played d6.

5.Bg2 0-0 6.c4 Nc6

I don't know. Why not 6...c6? Now the position is starting to take the character of a reversed Closed Sicilian, but with the bishop badly placed on e7; Black has no Ne7 and a kingside pawn storm would be tantamount to suicide, as he white would own the a1-h8 diagonal then.

7.Nc3 d5

Well, it's hard to suggest a better move. 7...Be6 would be met by 8.Nd5 and black is slightly tangled up.

8.Nxd5 Nxd5 9.cxd5 Nb4 10.Qb1 Nxd5 11.Nf3

White was threatening 11...Nb4

11...f6 12.0-0 c5

It's hard to suggest a better move. The strategy to set up a Maroczy Bind fails instantly to the thematic break on the next move fails to...

13.d4


but white would have played this move anyway. After

13...exd4 14.exd4 Be6

Black manages to maintain some fight for the center, so perhaps 12...c5 was necessary

15.Qe4 Qb6 16.Rae1 Bf7 17.Nh4 Rfe8 18.Nf5

It's common principle that a knight on f5 is a strong attacker.

18...Bf8 19.Qg4 g6

preventing 20.Nh6

20.dxc5 Qxc5 21.Rc1 Qa5 22.Qh4!

A piece sacrifice which nets 3 pawns, and of course a possibly mating attack. I can't see an immediate win for white here though.

22...gxf5

I don't think black could reject the knight. His king is under heavy pressure, and his f6 pawn is loose.

23.Bxd5 Bxd5 24.Qxf6 Re6 25.Qh8+ Kf7 26.Qxh7+ Ke8 27.Qxf5 Rd8 28.Qh5+ Ke7 29.Qh7+


29...Kd6??

What?! 29...Ke8 leaves the king stuck in the centre, but there is no immediate (or obvious, at least) win for white. The text is complete suicide, and it doesn't get the king anywhere (except to the other half of the board). I have no idea what possessed Mok to make this move.

30.Ba3+ Ke5 31.f4+ 1-0

B3

Tan,Khai Boon (2160) - Howell,David W L (2616) [D85]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.cxd5 Nxd5 5.e4 Nxc3 6.bxc3 Bg7 7.Ba3!?


It's not exactly a main line move. But it's good to see that Khai Boon made an effort to prepare something.

7...0-0 8.Rc1 b6 9.Nf3 c5 10.Bc4 Nc6 11.Bd5 Qc7 12.0-0 e6

Perhaps the point of Bd5: to provoke e6. But was it really worth 2 tempi?

13.Bc4 Bb7 14.Qe2 Rfd8 15.d5


Maybe it was: e6 is weak now. But unfortunately, the dark squared bishop is now badly placed on a3, biting on granite.

Na5 16.dxe6 Nxc4 17.Qxc4 fxe6 18.Ng5

Maintaining the tension first. The e6 pawn isn't going anywhere. But perhaps, with hindsight, white should have just taken immediately with 18.Qxe6+

18...Re8 19.f4 h6 20.Nxe6 Qf7

The point. Now the knight is pinned.

21.f5 Bc8 22.Bb2

The d4 pawn, having advanced, has left its compatriot isolated on c3 and in need of defence. But c3 remains to be a weakness, while seriously hampering the bishop. In view of this, I think it would have been better for white to jettison the pawn and play Rcd1 or Rce1 immediately.

22...Bxe6 23.fxe6 Qxe6 24.Qxe6+ Rxe6 25.Rcd1 Rxe4 26.Rd7 Rf8 27.Rxf8+ Kxf8 28.Kf2


How unfortunate! The need to play this move first takes away white's opportunity to restore material balance and any hope of saving the game.

Re7 29.Rd6 Kf7 30.h3 h5 31.g4 hxg4 32.hxg4 Be5 33.Rd8 Ke6 34.Rg8 Rh7 35.Re8+ Kd6 36.Kg1 Rh4 0-1


Jones,Gawain C B (2576) - Long,Peter (2302) [B11]

1.e4 c6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.d4 Nf6 5.e5 Nfd7?!

The theoretical move here is 5...Ne4. But Peter wants to play a French structure without the problem child light-squared bishop. Looks like a sound, practical, albeit passive choice to me.

6.h3 Bxf3 7.Qxf3 e6 8.Bf4 a6 9.Be2 c5 10.dxc5 Nc6 11.Qg3 Nxc5 12.0-0 Nd4 13.Bd1 h5

The condition of the black position are highlighted by this move: It's solid enough to warrant this move, but at the same time passive enough that this is probably black's only "plan". He basically gains some space on the kingside, perhaps with the intention to fix the structure with h4 if it becomes feasible.

14.b4 Nf5 15.Qf3 Nd4 16.Qe3 Nf5 17.Qd2 Nd7 18.Nxd5?


Very dubious. White can't get enough for his piece.


18...exd5 19.Qxd5 Ne7?

Why? This only succeeds in shutting in the bishop. 19...Bxb4 was probably better, intending to castle if white doesn't do anything immediate.

20.Qxb7 Ng6 21.Qe4 Nxf4 22.Qxf4


Now the position is opened, with black's king stuck in the center. He is never going to be able to castle, since white always has e6 to open the f-file. Black will suffer.

Rb8 23.c3 Nb6 24.Bb3 Qc7 25.a4 g5

Suicide. But it's impossible to suggest a move that doesn't lose; white is going to infiltrate anyway, and black is only speeding up the process.

26.Qf5 Qd7 27.e6 fxe6 28.Qe5

Oops.

1-0

USD Exchange Rate

Well, I'll be quick with this one. It's about time someone mentioned this:

MCF needs to find another money changer. As far as I know, as of 2010(or several years before for that matter), RM3.80 for US$1 is a total rip off. I wish I could track down the culprit bank that is taking our dear federation's money, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find any banks that sell US$1 for more than RM3.50 since 2007. MCF seems oblivious to this con job, since I've seen that they've quoted US$1=RM3.80 in all of their cost tables/sheets(e.g. participation for a tournament through MCF)! Either that, or money has been leaking out through a fourth dimensional portal while payments were facilitated through MCF...I mean, where else could our money be going if we keep paying RM3.80 for something that costs RM3.20, right?

Deserving to Win

Well, I've pretty much had nothing to write about, since so far we've been lacking drama at the local scene (at least I haven't caught wind of any so far). I'd tell you first that this post more or less unrelated to what I expected to be writing about when I first started this 'blog'. I guess it does have a faint connection with why we tend to have problems advancing, since this subject can be related to our morale. But whatever. I'm only writing this because I'm bored to death right now, and it's been ages since my last post. My main policy still stands.

So, to start things off, I'd suppose that most people are familiar with this concept, and have their own taste of the experience of being on the receiving end and 'sending' end of a turn of the tables in a 'decided' game. And the feeling is, more or less, consciously, unconsciously or somewhere in between, "Why did this happen? I should have won! I was killing him and pressing to win! He didn't deserve shit!". Well, aside from citing the quote, "Your game is only as good as your worst move", or something like that, let me share my personal experience on this subject with you.

I was in a tournament some time back (sometime within the span of 3 days to 127 years ago). My opponent for the round had a much higher rating than me at the time, and I'm pretty sure I was playing either white or black. So anyway, the game starts, and my opponent plays relatively quickly. He misplays the opening by making a move-order inaccuracy on move 8, which I capitalized on. We reach a position where my opponent's position began to look troubled in many variations, despite the fact that the present position looked rather calm. I had 1:00 to his 1:20. He realized this, and started to spend a lot of time on each move he makes. He spends half an hour over the next 5 moves, and I spent 10 minutes. We've reached a position where I have a lot of potential for a sudden attack against his king. His position looked pretty defenseless, and he spends the next 40 minutes thinking. For a certain duration of this time I was wondering if he was disgusted and refused to simply resign because he was about to be destroyed by a player who he should statistically be scoring some 80% against.

Finally, with less than 10 minutes on his clock he makes a move that doesn't seem to change anything in the position, but he was threatening to win some material (albeit being irrelevant to the action that's going on). But as I looked at the position I started to doubt my attack. Maybe he can hold off the attack with only minimal loss of material, then I would have had a net loss of material, which would pressure me to attack even further, which is risky and such, considering that there was even the possibility of a counterattack. After thinking for half an hour, I didn't see an immediate win with my programmed move, so I decided to play a different move. He instantly replies with a move that parries the threat but fails to create one(the threat he created was pinned, so to speak). But then I looked at the position again. I had no way to continue my 'attack'. Let's skip the technical details of why, it's boring and irrelevant.

Soon it dawned upon me that his position had some sort of 'coil-spring effect' onto mine. He had threats of his own. The position finally simplified into a 3-piece endgame, and I continued to play badly, and since there was an increase in time, my opponent won. I was horrified at the end of the game. How could this happen? He was just defending, and at one point he even offered me a repetition of moves! I was doing all the work!

Then I analyzed the game. My handling of his slight error was great! I made all the best moves in the position. I was a genius! But then I took a second look. What would have a player slightly weaker than me done? Nothing different, I supposed. I realized that my moves were quite obvious for anyone familiar with the type of position that would arise. It was either that I make the moves I played, or allow my most valuable piece to be exchanged off. It was about as genius as not playing 5.Nxe5 in the exchange Ruy Lopez.

Fine. But what about the position where I was about to destroy him? It was only 10 moves after his error! Of these 10 moves, the first 4 were obvious; the next 3, I could say were good strategical moves that led to a lot of trouble for my opponent; the next 3 were obvious...and the final one was my mistake. What was worse was that I realized, I should have just gone to sleep during my 30 minutes of thought. I had given my opponent an extra tempo in my calculations for my 'programmed move'. No wonder why my opponent spent ages thinking in that position! He probably realized that he was completely lost! But even then I realized, I was still winning in the extra-tempo-variation I had calculated! In other words, I spent those 30 minutes calculating utter crap. I had no idea of what made me make that move I played. But even then, further analysis showed that my position was still marginally better. After which I was gradually outplayed and lost anyway.

So I realized, perhaps I could argue that my opponent did not deserve to win. All of his problems were self-inflicted, akin to playing with fire. But did I deserve to win? Absolutely not! I didn't make any great moves; he just made bad ones. And in the final position, when the killing blow was right under my nose, I failed to find it(to add to my embarrassment, I should add that I gave my opponent the extra tempo only 3 moves into the variation). And because of that, the game equalized. After this oversight, and another, the position was rather balanced. I guess one could say that karma finds its way even on the chessboard! After that, I was outplayed; he came up with a better plan than I did in the endgame.

It was at this point when I would figure out: I was only winning due to a series of opening inaccuracies by my opponent! I only managed to punish it because I knew he had made a wrong-looking move since I (apparently) understood the position better than he did, since I happen to study that opening! I wasn't playing better than my opponent (as the result evidently suggests). I was simply, in the words of what some players call their opponents when they lose, 'lucky'. After the position leveled off, I was duly outplayed. That means my opponent played better than I did. And outplaying me meant that he did not simply win because of some one or two mistakes on my part, unlike what was happening to him earlier. I did not deserve to win, contrary to what one might think!

In fact, this phenomenon of a weaker player losing to a stronger player in a position which he/she 'did not deserve to lose' was more or less testified by my performance in subsequent rounds in that tournaments. I lost to higher rated players. But looking at my games against weaker players, I noticed that in 3 of them, the game had been reduced into rather equal 2-piece endgames, and yet I won at the end of each of them. And I even had one game which I won a losing endgame! Similarly in this case, I noticed that in the drawing games, I had presented my opponents with no chances to go wrong in the middlegame. That's why they made it to the endgame, which they ended up playing poorly! As for the losing one, all I did was make 1 mistake while pressing to win; and I turned the tables at the end! So to summarize these 4 'fortunate'(but I beg to differ) games, I asked myself: Was I playing well? The answer was, of course, a flat out 'no'. But then comes the question: did my opponent deserve to win/draw? Double no! They had shown no effort to do/create anything in the position prior to the evaluation being 'very drawish' or 'winning' for them!

[Also, a piece of advice to most Malaysian players: The players I had beaten in that manner are stronger than most of you. So don't agree to a draw in 'drawish' endgames only because endgame textbooks say so. It's only drawn when it's obviously drawn to you AND your opponent. A psychological fact too: Those who agree to draw only because it 'should be drawn', but don't know why, are simply doing that because they are afraid to lose. So don't fool yourself. Play on. And if your opponent offers the draw, you can deduce something from that. The experience will do you good.]

So what can one say about 'deserving to win'? Well, to me, after that experience, such a 'phenomenon' does not exist, not over the board at least (e.g. if you were completely winning and the tournament venue caught fire and the game had to be restarted, then yes, you deserved to win. But that's off the board interference). Say, if you make an elementary blunder in a won position, that would just show you were overconfident. You don't deserve to win. Remember that when you argue that one side does not 'deserve to win', that does not automatically imply that the other side does. In fact, if the score was awarded for 'a well-deserved win', I think those 5 games I played in that tournament will end with a 0-0 score at the end.

So the next time your opponent/friend/some random person tells you that they "deserved to win", please, show them this article.