Chess for Life!

I was sad early this year because Chess Inter-University for staffs would not be held. Why? Chess is considered by universities as not main sport activities while this year the event is far away at Sarawak. Funny is it. People who do not know about the sport would consider Chess is not important. Well below are some of the important facts:

1. Chess has been played at SEA games, do other games being sent to Sarawak do?
2. Companies all over the would spend million of dollors investing in Chess tournament. Important tournaments such as Chorus, Dormund, Mainz, Biel, Wijk Aan Zee, US Open and many more are held every year costing multi-million dollars.
3. IBM spent millions of dollar on Chess research and they successfully get the harvest when their machine known as Deep Blue successfully beat World Champion in 1999. Later, this machine was sold like hot cakes to big organization who like huge and smart number cruching such as weather forecast, pharmaceutical, army, research entity and many more.
4. While most sport does not depend on technology to excel, Chess needs both the technology and sweat. Players can easily lost weight during tournaments.
5. Chess is an excellent way to energize your brain, mental balances, and self-control

Anyway, to ensure once in a year I escape from all the work life, I attended the selection for Johor MAKSAK (Civil servent sport event). Below is the result which was held on Saturday 12 July 2008.

1. Noorullah Omar JKR 4
2. Zulfakar Aspar UTM 4
3. M. Zahid Shukor Pendidikan 3.5
4. Nasir Shaikh Husin UTM 3.5
5. Hamdan Sairi Pendidikan 3
6. Mohd Sahiri Pendidikan 3

The top three are automatically qualified to represent Johor for National level event. This year the event was held in Penang.

The journey from Johor to Penang was done by bus together with Dart and Karum players. This is the big mistake for me. The journay took more than 11 hours from 10pm 30 July until 9.30am 31 July. As a result of this long hour journey and being in the bus with close air circulation has cause my health to suffer. As soon as we arrived I was having cough, and flu. It is ok if you have a fever for a chess player. But, having flu will slow down your brain a lot! To make matter worst, I cannot sleep due to my cough. Even if I fall asleep at night, I still can easily wake up due to the cough. In the end, I did not have enough sleep.

I played very badly in this tournament. From 5 games, I only managed to draw one game, win one game, and lost 3 games. And all my 3 games were actually won games. But as each of the game progress, I can not think properly either either tactically, strategically, or psyciologically. I would like to congratulate Norullah, Yusof, and Zahid for excellent play. As a team we manged to improve our position from last year result which was from 10th to 7th. I also think Goh and Hamidi has done good job despite their shortcomings.


The only game I won is shown in the notation picture. I have never this kind of game before. May be due to my illness I prefered to play safe compared to normal agressive Scillian Defense. It looks like my opponent did not expect this type of position (5. c4) causing him to lost idea what to do. I slowly press my opponent until he himself made suicidal move (33. Re2 Qe2) out of desperation.


The journey back home was not that bad because I went back on my own together with Yusof. We dropped by KL on Sunday. Yusof took a bus to Air Hitam, Johor while I went to Puchong. The next day, I attended a meeting in Putrajaya.


The good thing about being to Penang was having good foods, and swimming to regain my health. Playing in the tournament also remind me to have self discipline where I have to woke up early in the morning whether I have enough sleep or not!