Monday 19 January 2015

My little sister becoming a little tiger

Before we jump to my next post about myself, let me show you one game my ten-year-old sister played a few days ago in a classical FIDE rated tournament under 2200. Her FIDE rating is still 1626, but I don't bother about it so much since I'm sure she'll improve rapidly in an instant *proud sister alert* :P



My sister, Diajeng, played Black here. The finishing part started in a common way, positional but not too positional while maintaining advantages in pieces activity which led to win some material.


                                                                       25... c4 26.£e3 £d7 27.f5 ¦xd4 28.¦de1


At first, I did not quite get her intention by playing 28... ¦d3, allowing White to play 29.£xa7. I thought she just simply missed it like what kids usually do. But her next moves showed an interesting plan which impressed me.

 
29... £c6 30.e6 ¦xh3+ 31.¢g1 Before entering the games of the tournament to my computer, my sister kept reminding me to pay special attention on Game 7 which is this. Now I know why :)


31... £d6!! It's looking good indeed, but after a few seconds of hesitation I decided to check it with my engine. And yes, this was the best move Houdini could show. 32.gxh3 £g3+ 33.¢h1 ¦d2 34.exf7+ Now it's already pretty easy for Black.
 

                                                                      34... ¢xf7 35.¦e7+ ¢xe7 36.£c5+ ¢f7 0–1


I hope this game entertains you as much as it did to me :)

Thursday 1 January 2015

Bye 2014... Hello 2015

Another year has passed, I hope it was a good one for all of us, well for me it was despite all the downs I sometimes had to endure among these 365 days I still could end this year with a broad smile on my face :D

Hmm.... not sure what I should write on the next passage, but lets talk about how my chess went this year. OK, I haven't been regularly writing reports on my blog and I'd now like to take you back to each month of this year as a quick run-down of my chess agenda.

January
In this month I played 2 tournaments in Australia which both took place in Melbourne. I didn't do so well in Australian Championship, only 6/11 and lost quite a lot of rating. There was a week gap until Australian Women's Masters where I was the first seed of the tournament and being favourited to be the champion. I went clear first, but didn't perform well enough till I had to lose (again) a few points of rating even though in the end the cash prize wiped my tears a little bit.

February
I went to Europe for a short one-week getaway while also playing chess. But nothing really serious since it was only Blitz and Rapid events of Vladimir Petrov Memorial in Latvia. It was kinda exciting to go to this place where there was around 0 degree every day and (certainly) below 0 at night right after spending weeks in an extremely hot Australian summer (I happened to suffer Adelaide's hottest day in 10 years, it was reaching 46 degrees Celsius). The results weren't so bad. I went higher than several GMs in the blitz tournament (including Alexey Shirov ;) and in the rapid-play, although not as good as in blitz,  8/15 was enough to get the Best Women's prize. There were lots of titled players in the field, respectably GMs and IMs, it was quite surprising me seeing how average the event was. It was a good training and holidays anyway. I had some time to enjoy the cold Helsinki city in Finland before going back home.

March
I was a bit unsure whether to keep playing in the annual HD Bank Open in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. It was already my 4 consecutive times playing in that event so I kinda felt bored. I decided to come and play eventually and it immediately proved as a bad decision. I started the tournament really badly: losing and drawing with players like 400 points below me. But then I catch up by winning my last 3 games and it turned out to be not so bad anymore. Although I lost 25 elo points, I got US$ 100 to compensate each point loss by winning the shared Best Women's prize. Oh well.... :)

April
Yayyy! My birth month! There is something about this month which always gives me some positive energy. To begin the month, my siblings and I traveled together to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to compete in KL Open. My birthday was in the middle of tournament and I managed to celebrate it with my brother and sister, boyfriend, friends, and colleagues. My result was pretty average, 5,5/9 and losing just 1 elo rating. But it was a good warm-up for the real battle that is Asian Continental which held in Sharjah, UAE 6 days after KL Open. I went there with a low expectation. Although I was a reigning champion by winning it in 2012, to be honest I just wanted to get my rating up again since I had been losing it in the tournaments before this one. But God blessed me with the title again: Asian Champion for the second time. That means I already collected 2 unused tickets to play in the Women's World Chess Championship cycle.

May
No chess activity in this month. I was still tired from the last tournament so I made another short getaway to the land down under and enjoyed my time in a mildly cold autumn... (P.S: I don't like hot weather)

June
Here comes the months of chess tournaments chains mostly in Europe. It's well known that when summer approaches, you will be having a hard time choosing tournaments to play.In my case I chose Bulgaria for the second time, the country gave me a good impression when I was there a year before. I played in 2 tournaments in a city called Varna: Albena and Golden Sands Open, both are in Grand Europe series. I did pretty average in the first tournament in Varna and played much better in the second one, gaining 18 points and getting my 9th IM norm *coughs*. Yes I completed all the required IM norms back in 2010 but I had such unstable rating progress a few years after it and hadn't ever made it to 2400.

July
CZECH REPUBLIC! Yes! I finally went there :) My tournament went really well in Pardubice Open and finally crossing 2400 in live rating and getting my 10th IM norm in addition. I knew it's the formula made specially for me, it took me 10 IM norm to be legally an IM *sighs*. Actually before June started, after telling my good friend IM Kevin Goh Wei Ming a chain of tournaments I would be playing before the Olympiad, we kinda had a bet. I optimistically told him that I would make it to be an IM before Olympiad started or else I would buy him a Manchester United jersey. Thank God, he didn't get a new jersey he wanted :P

August
It's Olympiad time! I flew directly from Prague to Oslo then Tromsø, Norway. The first round was played on August 1st, I think this was the earliest among most all Olympiads in a decade where they usually started in September or onwards. Indonesian women's team started so well, we had people's attention to us by playing the Chinese team on the first board in the 5th round! But the euphoria didn't last long. We went collapsed after getting beaten by the top groups consecutively. Even yours truly missed her GM norm in the 9th round after successfully destroying her own position against Nana Dzagnidze from Georgia. A draw would have maintained the chance still, it would be up to the result of next round. In the final result we went so low to the 61st placed. A lesson to be learned....

September
No chess tournament, just a full month of chess training in my home country with my dear colleague Sergey Tiviakov. It was supposed to be the preparation of the Women's World Chess Championship which was planned to be held in October 2014. It's now being postponed for several months (dates still not announced yet) because of some sponsorship issues.

October
Another month of chess training but just by myself. I had spared this month from any tournaments for the event I have mentioned above. And toward the end of this month, I decided that I deserved another short-to-medium holiday to enjoy the spring season at you-know-where ;)

November
I played in one regional event representing my city and made a clean sweep :) A few days after that I flew to Doha to play in the 2014 Qatar Masters Open which considered to be one of the strongest open tournament in the world. The tournament went from November 25th to December 5th.

December
So I got literally crushed in Qatar Masters, scoring 3/9 and losing 15 elo. But it's alright, it was just not my tournament. I had lots of fun and experiences to compensate it. Soon after Christmas, I flew to Auckland to play in the 2015 New Zealand Chess Championship (January 1st - 11th). I had interesting days of activities and adventures before the tournament. Hope they will encourage me to have fresh mind for the tournament. Updates about it will follow afterwards.

So stay tuned for more updates. I will have posts about New Zealand and Russia for my next blog. I wish you all a better year. Happy 2015!

Friday 16 May 2014

When a Plate of Fried Rice Globetrotting 4 Countries in One Hour



Oh wow, my last post was in August 2013 *faints*... *gets up* I think if there was an award of who's the worst blogger in the world, yours truly would be the one. I don't know why but I found it's hard to get my feeling into blogging consistently despite all good times, great tournaments, exciting new countries and people, bad games, tiring trips, sleepless nights as an insomniac chess player, etc etc that are basically interesting to share with. Well well well, I'll try to keep you guys updated more regularly. And by regularly it doesn't mean once a year like what I've been apparently doing here *blushes*

To make stories short, if somehow you were wondering how this passion is back, maybe I should thank my super spicy homemade fried rice that I'm eating now while writing this post and doing some emails about my coming trips to Bulgaria for somehow giving me some inspirations. Oh right, I'd miss Indonesian cuisine again for I wouldn't be able to find the right spiciness in my food in Europe...not cool :/ Before we go through my upcoming chess trips plans, let's take a moment flashing back my past trips from last year....

For my love of traveling, I've been going overseas every month especially in year 2013 - don't be jealous, but it's right when people say traveling is addictive! Oh you... drugs in my blood.... :S

My super loyal pair of converse. They've been my best pal for almost 6 years and counting!






Let's start from... uhm... May 2013! OMG, it's exactly a year already. In the second week of the mentioned month, I won the 5th Alexander Great Open that held in Porto Carras, Greece. It was one of my most relaxing tournaments and I even surprised myself for being the clear first winner in the tournament. Why did I say so? Well, I didn't do any serious preparation because I was taking care my sister, Diajeng, who was playing the World Schools at Girls Under 10 group (and she got the 2nd placed with 8 points out of 9 rounds!). All I did daily during the tournament days were looking after her sleep, fixing her food,  and becoming her human alarm (as I always slept much later and woke up earlier than her to prepare everything she needed for the day). And I just did very little to myself included preparation before the game. But the positive side of lacking time and effort of preparation was it made me more focus on every move in my game. After the tournament, my friend Goran Urosevic interviewed me in behalf of Chessdom.Open this link to read it.

Posing with a trophy and medal on a beautiful sunny day in Greece makes me feel like a goddess! :P



My sister and I at the marina in front of the playing venue

After this tournament, as a part of my Europe tour, I went to Hungary to play in the Caissa GM tournament in a city called Kecskemet. By scoring only 2,5 out of 9 games, I lost all the elo points I earned in Greece when playing here. But it was a great experience to have some legends playing in the same groups as mine, eg Sax Gyula (deceased in January 2014, may he rest in peace), Groszpeter Attila, and Ilincic Zlatko. Despite all the bad stereotypes about those monthly tournaments in Hungary, I want to assure you I had a good time playing in this country. Those GMs that I mentioned above were really great players and what amazed me more was that they were no longer young. In our postmortem analysis after each game, they showed a very structural explanation towards each move in an...what should I say... ancient way perhaps? And yet, really constructive! It was unlike the modern era like now which principles are easily refuted by the computers. Salute!


I took a car trip from Kecskemet to Vienna, Austria. Time to share you all how I spent my off days before playing my 3rd and 4th tournaments in Bulgaria. Oh btw, all of this was a solo trip. Because in order to be a brave young lady, one must conquer the world alone (?) haha it's just because I found it very challenging to do everything alone in foreign countries, being an independent young woman is nothing bad at all :)


 

I got to taste the famous Wiener schnitzel and sachertorte. I did a sightseeing to their castles, palaces, and churches. I went to their classical music concert at Beethoven House. Oh Vienna.... I'm in love :*


Schonnbrunn Palace
At St. Stephan Cathedral
At Saint Peter's Church
Performances at the Beethoven's House

It was a rainy and cold day but I had to drag my 25 kg luggage down to a few blocks from my hotel in Vienna to the nearest subway station to take a train to Vienna airport to catch my flight to the capital city of Bulgaria, Sofia then to Varna where the Grand Europe Open was held. It wasn't an easy task for a girl at all....


See how Sofia greeted and welcomed me to the city.

Grand Europe Open 2013 was a series of 2 tournaments in Varna city on June 1st till 18th 2013. Two beautiful resorts were chosen to be the venue of each event: Albena and Golden Sands. I have 2 simple impressions for each of them: Albena was so quiet while Golden Sands was so lively. Can I request something in between please?


an IM norm was awarded in Albena for my solid performance


Ahh.... Golden Sands was perhaps too lively that affected my results badly. And as I'm going there again next month, I have to make sure that I won't repeat the same mistake. I mean, come on... there are lots of new mistakes that yet to be done *winks* Nevertheless, I had a good time with friends that minimize my sadness of my bad play. Those time which usually occur at night after the game.


With Zurab and Diana

And peeps, I did some photo shoots at a local studio wearing some classical costumes just for fun. So, which one do you like best? 









I almost always laughed when seeing those pictures. But don't let them bluff you for my feminine looking, coz it was only for this photo shoot session :) Anyhow, it was a good memory after all...


Sveta Sofia or Saint Sophia statue in the heart of the city

End of the tournament I had another day off in Sofia. The embassy of Indonesia in Sofia was so nice to me that they provided me a car with its driver to take me around the city. And by end of this month I'll fly again to the country to play in those tournaments again, but now I won't be alone as Indonesian Olympic team will take a part in them too.

Now I finished my fried rice, let me call it a night too... I'll be back to do my July reports and onwards as soon as possible. Hope you enjoy it so far. Cheers! :)                                                          

Sunday 25 August 2013

3rd INDONESIAN OPEN 2013

3rd INDONESIA OPEN CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP 2013 REGULATIONS


1. ORGANIZER
The tournament shall be organized by the Indonesian Chess Federation from October 9 to 18, 2013 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Organizing Committee Secretariat
Indonesian Chess Federation (PERCASI)
Address: Kanselary KONI Pusat Pintu VI Gelora Bung Karno, Senayan Jakarta, Indonesia
Phone: (+62 21) 5731340
Fax: (+62 21) 5731340
Email: pb.percasi@gmail.com; indonesianchessfederation@yahoo.co.id
Website: www.inachess.com
Contact Persons (International):
1. Mr. Henry Hendratno
Mobile: +62 815 8888 020
Email: henryhendratno@gmail.com
2. Mr. Kristianus Liem
Mobile: +62 816 987 794
Email: k_liem@yahoo.com
3. Mr. Alip Prihantoro
Mobile: +62 816 714 697
Email: bhasudewa@gmail.com
4. Mr. Bunawan Bong
Mobile: +62 816 998 957
Email: skak_bun@yahoo.com

2. PARTICIPATION
The Indonesia Open Chess Championship 2013 is open for all chess players from federations member of FIDE with ELO Rating minimum 2200.

3. REGISTRATION & ENTRY FEE
* Free registration for GM/IM with ELO Rating above 2500 (Free Board & Lodging for the first 20 players who confirm their participation. The rooms are provided: double rooms at the 5-stars hotel for two persons sharing)
* ELO Rating 2200-2300: 150 USD.
* ELO Rating 2301-2499: 100 USD.
* The number of participants is limited only to (approximately) 150 players.
* Registration closed 1 October 2013.

4. TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
Appointed: 9 to 18 October 2013

Wednesday, 9 October 2013 : Arrival & Re-registration
19:00 – Opening Ceremony

Thursday, 10 October 2013 : 10:00 – Technical Meeting
15:00 – Round 1

Friday, 11 October 2013 : 09:30 – Round 2
16:00 – Round 3

Saturday, 12 October 2013 : 15:00 – Round 4

Sunday, 13 October 2013 : 09:30 – Round 5
16:00 – Round 6

Monday, 14 October 2013 : 15:00 – Round 7

Tuesday, 15 October 2013 : 09.30 – Round 8
16:00 – Round 9

Wednesday, 16 October 2013 : 15:00 – Round 10

Thursday, 17 October 2013 : 10:00 – Round 11 (Final)
19.00 – Closing Ceremony

Friday, 18 October 2013 : Departure

5. VENUE
The Tournament will be held at the Puri Ratna Ballroom, Grand Sahid Jaya Hotel,
Jl. Jenderal Sudirman 86 Jakarta 10220 – Indonesia.

6. ACCOMMODATION
Official Hotel: Grand Sahid Jaya Hotel (*5 Stars): http://www.grandsahidjaya.com
Single room US$ 120/day/person Full Board
Twin room US$ 80/day/person Full Board

7. RULES
Conduct in accordance with the Rules of the Federation International des Echecs (FIDE). In case of a disagreement in the interpretation of rules, the English text of the FIDE rules shall prevail. Zero-Start shall be applied.

8. FORMAT & TIME CONTROL
Individual Standard Chess. FIDE rated 11 Rounds Swiss System. Time control 90 minutes with 30 seconds increment for every move starting from move 1.

9. APPEALS COMMITTEE
The Appeals Committee shall consist of 5 (five) persons representing different participating countries, which will be selected and determined at the technical meeting.

10. PROTEST
Protest about the Arbiter’s decision shall be submitted to the Appeals Committee at the latest within 30 minutes, accompanied by US$ 100 Protest Money, and if the protest is upheld the money will be refunded.

11. PRIZES (Total 100.000 USD)
1st : 20.000 USD 2nd : 10.000 USD 3rd : 6.000 USD 4th : 4.000 USD 5th : 3.000 USD 6th : 2.500 USD 7th – 12th @ 2.000 USD : 10.000 USD 13th – 20th @ 1.000 USD : 8.000 USD
21st – 30th @ 750 USD : 7.500 USD
31st – 40th @ 600 USD : 6.000 USD
41st – 50th @ 500 USD : 5.000 USD

Best Women 1st : 3.000 USD 2nd : 2.000 USD 3rd : 1.500 USD 4th : 1.000 USD 5th : 500 USD

Best Junior U-20 (Date of Birth 1 January 1993 and after) 1st : 2.000 USD 2nd : 1.500 USD 3rd : 1 000 USD 4th : 750 USD 5th : 500 USD

Note: The Prizes in case of the same points of two or more players will be shared based on tie-break according to the Hort System.

12. OTHER MATTERS
In all other matters not covered by the preceding rules, the decision of the Organizing Committee shall be final.


Indonesian Chess Federation
PB. PERCASI


Hashim S. Djojohadikusumo
President

Saturday 22 June 2013

Summaries from December 2012 - April 2013

MAKITA Women Chess Match: Indonesia vs France


In December 2012, as I have mentioned before, the girls and I were playing a friendship match against France that was represented by IM Sophie Milliet, WIM Nino Maisuradze, WIM Natacha Benmesbah, and WIM Mathilde Congiu in Jakarta. The match was divided into 3 formats: blitz, rapid and classical. In blitz we lost 1-3, with Chelsie Monica Sihite as the only scorer in our team. We fought back in rapid and won 10-6! Our confidence boosted up and it showed in our classical games result by winning again with 9,5 - 6,5. This time our girl, Medina Warda Aulia, played exceptionally well. She scored 7,5 points out of 9 games (accumulation of 1 blitz game and 4 games of rapid and classical) and brought home most of the prize money than the rest of each of us of USD 12.000 as the total prize fund.



 

Australian Open 2013


A few days after the aforementioned match ended, I flew off to Australia to play the 2013 Australian Open in Sydney. It brought me a lot of nerves as my last visit to the country didn't end up well for my chess (see my previous report here). Struggled in the first round of the tournament against a 1800 player it added more negative feeling to my side. But fortunately with all the moral support from my closest friends there I could pick up and carried on. It turned out pretty well for me by beating the first seed of the tournament in the last round, GM Igor Khenkin from Germany. The victory brought me up to the 5th placed with 8 points out of 11 rounds. My Victorian friend, Jamie Kenmure, made a great coverage of the tournament on Chessbase: Fabulous fighting chess at the Australian Open. That also featured my game against the Super GM :) Full results can be seen here.

Before playing the last round



With my Australian friends (from left to right): GM Zong-Yuan Zhao, IM Moulthun Ly, FM Junta Ikeda (who got his 2nd IM norm in the tournament), and IM Andrew Brown.


In Sunshine Coast for a short holiday after the tournament.

 

HD Bank Cup Open 2013


On March 18th-25th I was in Ho Chi Minh city to play the very same event for 3 years in a row. My last year's result was not so good so I had an expectation that I'd got to play better this time. And yes, I played really solid throughout the tournament. With 5,5 points/9 rounds and performance rating of over 2450, I secured the first place of best women prize. And to add to the fun, I was given my 6th IM norm certificate as well :P If only it could be replaced by some rating points that I needed to break the 2400 mark :/

Below is my game against one of best Vietnamese players where I failed to keep my winning advantage to the end and eventually a draw was agreed.

From left to right: Me (1st best women), GM Zhao Jianchao (3rd placed), GM Le Quang Liem (1st placed) and GM Lu Shanglei (2nd placed)

 

 

Thailand Open 2013 

 

The event was held in Pattaya city this year from April 14th-21st and was really a great tournament. But because I was enjoying the relaxing environment too much, it didn't do well to my chess. Scoring only 5,5/9 and performing like a 2220 player, my rating was dropping down to 18 points. But nevertheless, I didn't regret on going there for I have gained more experiences and friends. It's one of the events that I'm considering to be back again next year ;)

Before starting of the 1st round

With GM Nigel Short in our photo shoot session.
Enjoying a fine sunny day at Pattaya beach with my roommate, WGM Irina Bulmaga from Moldova.
The winners of the tournament. GM Zong-Yuan Zhao from Australia took clear first.

My next post will be about my Europe trip from May - June. Stay tuned! :D