We Need OKU-friendly Chess Tournaments!

GiLoCatur is very touched with the courage of a young OKU chess player named Muhammad Tareq Shahir Bin Tarmizi (above picture) in the recent KL Junior Chess Championship. He played in the Under-12 Boys section. He managed to accumulate 3.5/6 points and placed 19th out of the total 50 participants. Not bad at all.

Hopefully such courage will motivate many Malaysian youngsters to learn about chess and participate in local chess tournaments. If Shahir can, why you can't?

GiLoCatur urges all the local chess organizers to be OKU-friendly so that players like Shahir could participate and show their skills and talent.

GiLoCatur hopes to see Shahir and his mother, Puan Wan Sharizah, more often in the local chess tournaments. GiLoCatur believes that with more tournament exposure and consistent chess learning and practice, Shahir will be the proud of nation in the future. To Encik Latiff aka Sifu, GiLoCatur suggests that Shahir to be included in the Malaysian paralympic or paragames chess team. What do you say?

[ GiLoCatur : OKU means Orang Kurang Upaya or disabled person. ]

[ This entry is written in Room #1203, Muar Traders Hotel at 2.30am. ]

GiLoCatur's Personal Blitz Rivalry

"Siapalah agaknya mamat sibaju orange yang mendabik dada di atas tu? Mentang2 dah 'takano den'"

"Aik ... lama termenung tu bang ... ingat boleh sayurkan aku semudah macam dulu ke? Walaupun National Rating aku lebih rendah hampir 400 point, pantang 'ughang awak' menyerah kalah."

"Alamak! Nak kena checkmate la ..."

Someone had provoked and challenged GiLoCatur for blitz games during the recent KL Junior Chess Championship. At the end of the first day of the tournament, GiLoCatur accepted the challenge. We had two 10-minute and one 5-minute blitz games. The last time we played was last year somewhere in March at the Goldcourse Hotel, Klang. GiLoCatur was easily beaten then.

With the comparison of the latest MCF rating (Jan 2010), between him (1561) and GiLoCatur (1172) it is logical enough that GiLoCatur would lose. BUT, given time and lots of blitz practice and sparring session it would be possible that finally victory will come. At least, GiLoCatur managed to make the fella had deep and longer thought several times during the games. And up to the middle game, GiLoCatur had better time control. So, for this year mission, besides improving the national rating, GiLoCatur wants to beat that fella in blitz.

Wanna know who the fella is whom GiLoCatur has blitz rivalry???

He is non other than ... and the only ...

[ This entry is written in Room #1203, Muar Traders Hotel ]

MRSM Bentong Contingent in KL Junior

Nine chess players from MRSM (Maktab Rendah Sains Mara) Bentong were participating in the two-day 2nd KL Junior Chess Championship. They came with their chess club teacher, Cikgu Afzan. GiLoCatur had a short chit chat with her and got very important feedbacks. She does not have much info on chess and the local chess tournaments. Her school chess club does not have chess clocks so that they are not used to play using chess clocks. They are also not familiar with the recording. Both the teacher and students do not know about the local chess blogs. The big question is. What need to be done to assist the aspiring school chess club teachers in promoting chess at their schools? How to outreach such potential Malaysian youngsters who have interest in chess?

Kudos to Cikgu Afzan for bringing several pupils of her school to chess tournament like this. Oh, GiLoCatur forgets to mention their names. They are AKALIL, ZUL, ZACK, ANWAR, SYAFIQ, SYUKRI, FIFY, ZARA and FADHLI. The two girls were playing in the Under 14 Girls section. Two boys in Under 14 Boys category while the rest is in Under 20 category.

Shake hands before a game starts. something new eh?

"If I knew I would play you, I would not come this far from Bentong, Pahang, you know!. We could just play at our hostel. LOL. "

The 2nd KL Junior Chess Championship

This weekend (30 th & 31st January 2010), GiLoCatur was at Cochrane Sports Excellence Center chaperoning the three kids - Fikri, Anis Fariha and Fahim Al-Faqeh, who were participating in the 2nd KL Junior Chess Championship. The total number of 181 Malaysian young chess players participated in five (5) categories - Under 20, Under 14, Under 12 and Under 10. All except Under 20 have both the boys and girls section. The six round tournament was organized by KL Teachers Chess Association headed by Cikgu Suhairi.

The format of the tournament is Swiss System of six rounds. The time control is 60 minutes or simply G/60. According to chess definition, the chess type played is standard or classic. It is not rapid or blitz. For GiLoCatur, the tournament is a warm up for the National Age Group or NAG that will be held in Penang during the March mid-term school break. Thus, all the three GiLoCatur's kids were playing in their respective age group category. Fikri or simply known as "Abang", a form two schooler, was playing in Under 14 Boys section along with Tan Wei Hao, Albert Ang Keliang and Chong Yan Meng.

Anis or "Kakak" as her family normally refer to, was the top seed in Under 12 Girls category. She was among 12 participants in the category. While the eight-year-old Fahim, called "Adik" at home, was among 57 participants in Under 10 Boys. He was supposed to play in Under 8 category, but maybe due to the small number in the category he had to join Tan Yong Zhao along with his 7-year old schoolmate, Muhammad Faqih Aminuddin and Muhammad Zarif Aiman, the son of Muhammad Arshad.

The breakdown statistics of the participant are : U20 (25), U14 Boys (20), U14 Girls (10), U12 Boys (47), U12 Girls (12), U10 Boys (57) and U10 Girls (10).

Do you want to know who are the champions? Below are the champions as per what GiLoCatur remembers. Basically, such results are the unofficial one.

U20 - Muhammad Izz Shaifuddin

U14 Boys - Fikri Saleh

U14 Girls - Paviteanayagi a/p Jayamurthy

U12 Boys - Dilwen Ding Tze How

U12 Girls - Nur Sabrina Aliya Asman

U10 Boys - Tan Yong Zhao

U10 Girls - Mok Shu Zing