Rainy Taiping Tournament

The 3rd CRC Taiping chess tournament completed successfully on 15th July with players from all over Malaysia taking part.

The day started with heavy rain in the morning while they (PS Lim, Anthony, Khai Boon and Kian Meng) pick me up at AutoCity, Penang. We then had to travel slowly due to the heavy rain and reached CRC Taiping after an hour of drive...

The tournament hall was already packed with people when we were there at 9.10am. Round 1 was schedule to start at 10am so we took our time to take some light breakfast. For those curious about the tournament details, here is the details.

Round 1 is to start in a few minutes time.

I had never played in a rated PICA (Perak International Chess Association) event before so I started the event without seeding and was ranked 60 where I were then paired against a rated PICA player at table 27.

This pairing situation luckily helped me to finish within top 10 later despite my poor performance as all my opponents are PICA rated which contribute to my high buch tie breaker.

The top seed, Khor Shihong with PICA rating 2334.

Elgin Lee, one of the youngest participants in the Open Category.

The tournament progressed without any major upset among the top seeded players.

Watch out for this boy, Evan Timothy Capel.

He had a winning position against the then runner up, Anthony Liong (PICA rated 2166) where Anthony played an inferior line of the Veresov Opening as White but cannot find the winning continuation in time trouble when they finally settled for a draw.

A quick glance at the U12 section.

Trophies on display.

Round 7 concluded with Khai Boon settled for a quick draw against Norazman Ismail (PICA 2092) at board 1, Kamaluddin and Shihong drew a hard fought game at board 2 while board 3 saw Anthony Liong playing Black, scored a beautiful win against Chuah Heng Meng (PICA 2250) causing the later to not to win any prize in the event.

The hardworking arbiters.

The arbiters then printed out the final standing. A scanned version of the Open Category final standing.

Official result from the organiser:

Top 10 Winners:

Some photos taken during the prize giving ceremony.

3rd placing: Kamaluddin Yusof (5.5 points)

2nd placing: Anthony Liong (6 points)

and the winner is...

Tan Khai Boon (6 points)

Tan Khai Boon (PICA 2237) had a successful campaign in Taiping scoring wins over Kamaluddin Yusof (PICA 2248) and Khor Shihong (PICA 2334) and conclude the event with 2 quick draws against Anthony Liong and Norazman Ismail and clinched the champion title with better tie-break over Anthony Liong.

Group photo for the top 10 winners

and group photo for the top 3 winners

Finally, after the event while everyone was leaving, a group photo among players from Penang and Mr. Yong.

Before heading back to Penang, Anthony recommended a place for cendol which was less than 500 meters from CRC Taiping.