Saturday 24 November 2012

Catching up...

Hi everyone!


Again it's been months since I wrote my last post. Yeah, I'm such a bad blogger and this may be not my thing hence the infrequent updates that I have on my blog. Alright fellas, so my post right now won't be entirely about chess -though it'll still be the main topic- but also about the related stuffs. Bear with me!


In August, during the school break, I went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to play a rapid chess festival. In the individual section I managed to score 7,5/11, defeated my good friend, Jimson Bitoon, in the last round and ruined his chance to get the best challenger prize (the prize for unrated player) while I was aiming the best lady's prize myself. Jimson, if you see this, please accept my belated apology :P You can see full results here. And in the team event, I had thrown myself in the ocean of Filipino players, confused? Well, though the event was held in Malaysia, but Filipino dominated the fields by both quantities and qualities from its players. I got teamed up with 3 Filipinos and 1 Malaysian as a reserve. Our team, Mastermind, took the 5th placed out of 66 teams! Another good friend of mine who got his first IM norm in the last Olympiad in Turkey, FM Lim Zhuo-Ren, won the Best Malaysian prize *claps* Full details of the tournament can be seen here.


As September began, I had to watch all the good players around the world competing each other just from home. Yes, many of you have known that I skipped the Olympiad this year. The reason? Uhm it's a bit complicated but let me try to make it simple. I had signed a contract to play in the National Olympics which dates, later on figured, were too close to the Olympiad. The event was such a grandiose one involving all the provinces in Indonesia, and chess was one of the games (sports?) that was being contested. And the officials of my province forbid me to play in order to keep me well-focused on the event. To make the story short, all was paid off, I won 2 golds in the National Olympics ;) Oh back to the Olympiad, the Indonesian girls did very well without my presence. They got 24th placed and won the Group C! For individual performances, we have Chelsie Monica Sihite who successfully obtained her first WGM norm and Medina Warda Aulia accomplished her WIM title in the very same event. Bravo!


Uni started in the late of September but it wasn't the cause of the bad ending of the month for me which ,sadly, continued till the beginning of October. It affected my health, assumingly, where unfortunately I had to play the 5th leg of Chinese League in Hangzhou City (Oct 6-9), scoring 1,5/4 and losing 11 ELO points :( As soon as the leg finished, I had to travel back to Jakarta because another event was about to start. It was the 2nd Indonesia Open. The whole details about the tournament -such as results, photos, interviews, etc- can be checked on Chessdom. I did considerably well here though was scoring 4/9 only, despite of it I had a chance to play with 5 GMs out of 9 rounds! :)


The rest of October till present has been dull. Uni's assignments, presentations, and assessments have been quite time-consuming. And to be honest, I'm feeling a bit rusty of chess. My next chess event will be on December 16th - 22nd, it's a friendship match with France. So 4 of us: Medina, Chelsie, Citra and myself will play against 4 top French women, namely: IM Sophie Milliet, WGM Nino Maisuradze, WIM Natacha Benmesbah, and WIM Mathilde Congiu. Sounds fun right! The match will be in Scheveningen system of blitz, rapid, and classical games. The total prize US$11.000 will be at stake. I'm gonna update more about it on my Facebook later.


And soon after Christmas, I will fly to Australia to play the Australian Open. Will have some days off before and after it. Yayy, holidays! :D Really looking forward to going there again :)


That's all for now, pray I'll blog more :P


Laterz!