Cover pic: IM Kevin Goh endorsing his signature on a chessboard – all volunteers/sponsors for the event get one chessboard with the autographs of every master/grandmaster in the event, as a gesture of appreciation for their help. Best Game Prize – GM Nguyen Anh Dung (vs GM Gareyev) Brilliancy Prize – GM Tsegmed Batchuluun (vs…
Cover Pic: Goh Wei Ming being interviewed by Straits Times on clinching his final GM norm With a 17 move draw against Xiangyi, Wei Ming finally, after 6 years of chasing the elusive final norm, scored 6.5/9 to make it. The Grandmaster-elect mused, “Throughout the tournament, I was quite fortunate. In Rd 1, I had…
Cover Pic: IM Liu Xiangyi deciding to play ‘Berserker mode’ against GM Timur Gareyev. The body language tells it all. As our first alternate FM Andrey Terekhov noted, the tension of the previous round dropped a few notches this round when the encounter between Wei Ming and Batchuluun ended in a draw before you can…
Cover Pic: Your scribe compiling yet another report (yes, it’s coming…be patient, I’m no octopus) By winning their respective games, GM Batchuluun and IM Goh Wei Ming streaked past the field, leaving their closest contender Tin Jingyao 1.5 points behind. Batchuluun inked his claim for the $1000 first prize by taking out top seed in…
Cover Pic: The irrepressible Timur Gareyev must be feeling rather sheepish after his inexplicable 31 Bxb7 against Irine. The term ‘stranger things have happened’ definitely is the phrase to describe Round 6 with respect to the Timur-Irine and Qianyun-Xiangyi games. GM Timur Gareyev, after suffering a loss against GM Nguyen in the previous round, went…
We held the sponsors’ challenge this morning and NM Olimpiu Urcan overcame IM Hsu Li Yang 1.5-0.5. In the first game, Li Yang essayed the QGD, a line he had handed the ‘Angmo’ some beatings in the past. This time, Urcan was better prepared and held the advantage right into the late middlegame when the…
Cover Pic: IM Dr Hsu Li Yang (aka ‘The Legend’) examines the games of round 5 (Li Yang was the one who came up with the idea of this event!) Right smack in the middle of the tourney, we saw the contestants in an uncompromising mood, fighting all the way to a round of decisive…
We didn’t want yet another blindfold exhibition for the side-event…but an activity which can have players involved as a training exercise and yet have fun. So we came up with this concept of having NM Olimpiu Urcan to play a 2 game rapid match (20 min + 10 sec increment) against a blindfolded Timur Gareyev….
In colloquial Singapore English (or Singlish), the term ‘panchan’ means ‘to give chance’. However, FM Timothy Chan took down one fella after another to win the Blitz challenge segment of our event, 2 points clear of FM Andrey Terekhov. Of course. one can point at Tim’s 2393 ELO or him having completed 3 IM norms…
