"Lovely chess moves and lovely melodies and lovely theorems in mathematics have this in common; every one has idiosyncratic nuances that seem logical a posteriori but that are not easy to anticipate a priori" - D. R. Hofstadter
by Junta
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| From the 2nd rest day |
The 8th Dato' Arthur Tan Malaysian Open came to a close with Round 9 on Thursday morning. It was a Chinese 1-2-3 finish, as GM Li Shilong drew to finish 1st on an impressive 7.5/9 (perf. 2681), and IM Lu Shanglei and GM Wen Yang were =2nd on 7/9, both winning their last game. Final ranking crosstable is here.
Gary Lane and Bobby Cheng were the top Aussies on 5.5/9. I finished my 5th and last tournament on this trip with a loss, resulting in the the same +5 -4 (not too solid) as at the World Open and Dutch Open. Fedja won to finish on 4.5.
I plan to do a post looking over stats of all of my games since June, next week, though it might bore some people to death.
Soon after the last games had finished, though, the Blitz tournament (G-5) got under way with a pretty strong field including 5 GMs and 11 IMs. Losing in Round 3 to the eventual winner in under 3 minutes (can't help going red in the face when beaten so easily) and via a tragic illegal move in Round 6, I still had hopes of making the top 8 who progress to the knock-out finals, but I was simply outplayed in the final, Round 9, finishing =10th.
[I failed to reproduce my sizzling form from the World Open Blitz , where I honestly played the best chess of my life (beating a 2700 2-0 in the last round mini-match) - I wish my games from that event could have been recorded, but I probably wouldn't be able to believe I really played them.]
The knock-out stage saw IM Lu Shanglei and Yu Ruiyuan reach the finals.
The former, ranked in the top 3 U/16 players in the world, with a GM norm achieved in the main tournament, was too strong, winning 2-0.
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| Ruiyuan (Black) - Shanglei (White) |
The prizegiving for the blitz and main events had a pleasant atmosphere. Although the Merdeka Team Rapid has still to finish, the organisation for the tournaments have been superb, and I hope I can come back again next year.
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| The winners of the three main tournaments, with their trophies |
I am really impressed with your quote of Hofstadter, one of my fav authors. I am re-reaidng Godel, escher and Bach prior to reading his newish book, I am a Strange Loop.
ReplyDeleteRe your postmortem, I for one would be interested, I have blogged that I am interested if someone more qualified than me will conduct a postmortem of the recent World Juniors to see how we can do better.