As you can see, newbie_learner not only struggles in making good moves over the chess board, but in taking decent photos as well ^o^
I have the luxury to relax as my Team “8.c4!” takes a bye. Originally, I was supposed to have a friendly match with Julien, captain of team “The Asia-Squared Bishops”, but due to last minute need to cover his team mates’ vacancy, we have to postpone our friendly, probably to next Wednesday’s Singapore Social Chess Meetup at Asia Square Tower One.
After a simple dinner with 2 local ‘chess families’ to celebrate the joined birthday celebration of 2 prominent chess coaches, GM ‘Bong’ Villamayor Buenaventura and Mr John Wong, I headed back to the fight scene at Cairnhill CC. I already see it as a “bloody round” with many of my chess friends playing one another head on. I’m actually glad to see some of the tough fights (and a couple of my friends’ games were still going on).
A picture is supposed to speak a thousand words, Unfortunately, I’m a really terrible photographer, and only these few are visible enough to convey a story =)
Your eyes didn’t play a trick on you. The 2 teams were really named Team “Woof!Woof!Woof!” and Team “Woof! Woof!”. What can I say? It’s the year of the dog!
The game between FM Timothy Chan (White) and IM Kevin Goh (Black) attracted the most crowd following. It emerged as an endgame whereby Black was trying to grind a win (Knight + 2 pawns vs Knight + pawn). Even though Black was unable to do so, and the point was split, I definitely saw some ideas on how grinding and defensive moves should be done in practice.
Also, as someone who is rather particular about observing proper chess etiquette, I wanted to point out that the game continued until the attacker (Black) is convinced that there is no way to make progress, and make the draw offer. A lot of times in low-level / club-level games / a game involving kid(s), the defender, in fear of losing, initiates the draw offer (which is considered irritating and perhaps ‘disrespectful’ to real, professional chess players). We should learn how it’s properly done.
Team “Kent Ridge Knights” v.s. Team “Pawnstars” (don’t get the spelling wrong!) This was the final ongoing game between Pok Wern Jian and Jonathan Koh. Team Pawnstars won 4-0 in the end. Just want to add that I was really lucky to steal 0.5 points when I played Jonathan in round 1 a couple of weeks ago. Had I encountered him in the latter rounds, he would have sufficiently “de-rusted”.
2 remaining games ongoing between Team “Marinus Deep” and Team Wolverines. Personally, this was a “bloody” match because I happen to know all 4 of them in person =) Team Marinus Deep was 1 of the teams which I helped to form by putting all the interested adult chess players found from various means to form a brand new team. In fact, out of the 8 players who made up Team Marinus Deep, I only know Abdulla (foreground) and Yogesh (background) in person ^o^
The 2 players in the earlier background ‘disappeared’ — Yogesh won his game against Marcellino, bringing the team score as Marinus Deep 1 : Wolverines: 2. Here, I thought Santoso (Black, Team “Wolverines”) made a very good evaluation and practical judgement — he knew there was no need to grind a win (his team would win with just a draw), and the board situation is actually more complicated than it appears (If anything, White’s a-pawn passer may be more important than Blacks d5 and f5 pawns combined, and Black is concerned if White can do force some sort of Queen exchange and make the a-pawn passer unstoppable.) With that in mind, he found the right plan of using the Black Queen to harass White King sufficiently, and then offered a very tempting draw which was very difficult for Abdulla to decline. The offer was accepted, and Team Wolverines narrowly won this 2.5:1.5.
Some little trivia on this game:
- Mr Warren Lim, a player on Team Wolverines and FIDE certified trainer (National Instructor), felt that both Abdulla and Santoso didn’t play their endgame well. I politely disagree. First, Queen + Pawns endgames are really tough in practice, and both sides did not have the luxury of time to play it out properly. Wait till he saw the “worst endgame play” I committed just a week ago in the earlier round, lol!
- Abdulla had forgotten to press the clock so many times! This is quite uncharacteristic of him — I guess nerves really played a huge decisive role in the league so far — In the first 2 rounds, 2 of my teammates forfeited their games on time in a promising position, and I also heard that similar things continue to happen for other teams… Oh well, time management, time pressure is part of the game!
The last game which ended (I didn’t dare to even try take a close-up in case it causes any distraction to the players, even though I didn’t use flash), I shall describe it in words. It was between IM Mascarinas Rico (Team “Bulldogs/Psalms 23”, White pieces) and FM Ly Hong Nguyen (Team “Woof!”, Black pieces). Black, with the Rook and Bishop, managed to squeeze a win out of White (Rook). This is an extremely difficult to convert endgame (much harder than our “basic” club players’ Bishop + Knight vs Lone King to me). The Chief Arbiter, Chris, was even following the game with the endgame tablebase equipped!
What is a young boy doing at the QCD Adults Chess League? This is not part of the league, of course. This is a friendly blitz played between GM Timur Gareyev (USA), yes THE world record holder for simultaneous blindfold matches, and our local aspiring youth (a proud ‘graduate’ of Singapore Social Chess Meetup!?), Ashton Chia. There was this funny moment whereby 1 of the QCD league players asked GM Timur Gareyev where he comes from (obviously not recognising him for who he is). Indeed, his ultra friendliness, even to persons he sees for the first time (thank you for the egg tarts treat!) would make one suspect he is “just another player in the league ^o^” (unless you happen to know him in one of his earlier blindfold events, which I happen to be aware of). In the background is IM Kevin Goh and FM Timothy Chan doing their post-game review.
Thank you for your time reading this!
Yours sincerely
newbie_learner