Okay, I'm here to blog about the Chess training course I went through yesterday and today.
The teacher in charge of the Permainan Dalaman club offered my school's Under-18 and Under-15 girls and boys Chess team to go for a Chess training course, which was to be held in SKBJ ( The primary school just next door to my school ).
The best part is that it was completely free of charge - The school would be paying the expenses for us! Awesome, no?
Well, only a few people decided to go for the chess course. The others were either too busy, or too lazy...
Okay, let's start with Friday, shall we?
Ummm, at roughly around 2.30pm, we ( Ashman, Jaslyn, Hari and I ) had to go to SKBJ.
We discovered that the Chess training course was in the SKBJ school library. We met Syaza and her friend along the way...
Inside the library, we met with Ismail, the Chess master that was going to be running the course.
After he showed us a few of his annotated games, he asked us to do some chess puzzles based on Rook and Bishop sacrifices. Ashman, Hazwan and I joked that this was something like a Chess Exam, and that we were sure to get an A for it!
After that, Ismail organised a short blitz competition: the U-12 and U-15 categories versus the U-18 category. ( For those of you who don't know what's "blitz", it's a very fast chess game, where each player is only given a time period of 5 minutes to complete all their moves ).
So technically, since it was a blitz competition, we simply do not have the time to make long calculations. Instead, we had to rely mostly on intuition, logic, common sense and luck.
Embarrassingly, the U-18 category lost to the U-12 and U-15 categories.
My guess is that we were "psychologically unprepared" to play a blitz competition that day...
But oh well...
Here are the pictures I took on Friday:
Jaslyn and Syaza!
At around 6pm, we were allowed to go home.
My mum was unavailable at the time, and therefore unable to come and pick me up and bring me home.
So, I had to follow Ashman back to his house and stay overnight.
Right after the competition was over, Ashman called his parents, and apparently, they were unable to bring us back to Ashman's house. That meant we had to walk ALL the way to Ashman's house in Tropica 2!
Luckily, Hazwan and his mother were passing by and offered to give Ashman and I a lift...
When we reached Ashman's house, we used his laptop most of the time. We chatted with my brother on Yahoo Messenger, as well as Jaslyn, Lynn and Hari on MSN Messenger. We even called Jas using MSN Web Call.
We also saw a lot of chess blitz games on Youtube.
Oh, of course, Ashman and I played a few friendly games of Chess during my stay.
In one of the games, I used one of my former favourite openings: The King's Gambit.
I was White, and Ashman was Black. Although my King safety wasn't very good, my pieces were very, very active, especially my Bishops!
After a while, we reached a certain position where I had a blistering attack on Ashman's king. Then, we realised that there could be a beautiful checkmate, due to the fact that my twin Bishops were slicing into Black's King's position.
Here's an image of that Chess game:
Ashman and I took a VERY long time attempting to find the solution! We tried nearly everything, including, but not limited to 1. Nd5+, 1. Ng8+, 1. Nh7+ and 1. Nd6+.
But then, we finally managed to find the checkmate!
Try and guess what's the mating move?
The correct move is 1. Nh5+!, leading to 1. ...Ke8 2. Nxg7#.
It will still be checkmate even if Black blocks the check from the dark-squared Bishop with either 1. ...Bf6 or 1. ...Rf6.
Beautiful checkmate position, right? [ smiles ]
I think we only went to bed at around 12 midnight...
We had to go to SKBJ again at 8.30 the next morning.
The next day, Ashman and I woke up at 6.30am, which was a bit too early, actually!
So, we decided to turn on Ashman's laptop again to do a few Chess Visualisation exercises.
And guess what? We got so caught up doing the exercises, we didn't realise that one whole hour just flew by!
When we looked at the clock, it was already 7.40am!!! And all of that time just passed by because we were too preoccupied doing the visual exercises!
Anyway, we hurriedly got ourselves ready to go to SKBJ for the second session of the Chess training course.
After a quick breakfast of roti canai, we went to the SKBJ library once again.
We met Amirah there. And honestly, I did not recognise her the first time I saw her!
She looks completely different with her glasses and her hairstyle!
Just take a look yourself:
Shortly afterwards, Chess master Ismail came and began the second session by showing us the importance of understanding the Opening and Opening traps.
He also taught us about how to use the Bishop and Rook combination to great effect.
I managed to take a picture with my handphone:
After he finished teaching us about a whole bunch of other stuff, he organised ANOTHER Blitz Competition. Only this time, it was a bit more serious, because the competition now contained 7 rounds and a proper pairing system, unlike yesterday.
However, this time, Hazwan and Jaslyn was absent because they were both busy...
In the end, I got 5 out of 7 points, with 4 wins, 1 loss and 2 draws.
Ashman got 7 out of 7 points! He didn't lose a single game!
Hmmm, I forgot what Hari's final score was...
Overall, I got 4th place in the whole competition, whereas Ashman got first place.
And the best part is that the Top 5 players get prizes!
The 4th and 5th players get MSSM vinyl chess boards, whereas the Top 3 players get cash money.
I got the MSSM vinyl chess board, whereas Ashman received RM10 worth of cash.
After that, the chess training course was over.
I had a short chat with Syaza just outside SKBJ before my mum came to bring me home.
Well, wasn't that interesting?
Monday's the day when the real MSSD Chess competition is going to take place.
I'm excited, but honestly quite nervous at the same time!
Just one more day to go!!! One more day till' the big day! [ smiles ]
Okay, I guess that's it for now.
May the Force be with you...
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