Chess Reading List

By Moulthun Ly

I am often asked by people to recommend various chess books. 

Therefore, I have gone through my collection and taken note of 

those I felt helped my chess improvement or were particularly interesting. 

Of course there are many others which I may not have had a chance to read. 

I have avoided listing any opening books for now as they are specific to players

interests. However, I may also go through and list these at a later time

as there are some great books being released. 

They are roughly grouped by various rating levels in which they were read.

However, many can be enjoy by players of all levels.

Happy Chess Reading!  

STARTING

Beginner - 1500

• Attacking Chess by Josh Waitzkin
• The Ultimate Book of Chess Puzzles

INTERMEDIATE

1500 - 2000+

• Simple Chess
• Chess for Zebras
• The Seven Deadly Chess Sins
• Secrets of Spectacular Chess
• John Nunn’s Chess Puzzles
• The Sorcerer's Apprentice

ADVANCED

2000+

• The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal
• Domination in 2,545 Endgame Studies
• Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manuel
• Perfect Your Chess

Vikings Weekender 2014 Open Section - Pictures

by Junta

Canberra's third biggest annual tournament (after the Doeberl Cup in April and ANU Open in July) is the Vikings Weekender held in November. This year the Open section saw 21 players and the Minor section 38 players, a healthy turnout.

There were six players rated over 2000 in the Open section.

Registered players sorted by rating and title

ID	Name	Fed	Origin	Title	RtgF	RtgN
1	Ly Moulthun			IM	2463	2512
2	Ikeda Junta			IM	2418	2427
3	Smirnov Anton			IM	2415	2402
4	Hu Jason			--	2138	2192
5	Yin Wenlin			--	1986	2064
6	Bliznyuk Andrey			--	2132	1999

A truly Aussie weekender in its toughness of having to play four games of 60 10 on the Saturday (10:30am-10pm), followed by three on Sunday.

6/7 - The winner was Moulthun who conceded draws with Jason and Anton. As usual he played games in his correct and positional style, not giving his opponents any chances, only being in real danger in our Round 4 encounter.

5.5/7 - 2nd was Anton who surprisingly conceded a draw to rapidly improving ACT junior Dillon Hathiramani (rated under 1700 - a great upset!) in Round 1, and otherwise just conceded draws with Moulthun and myself on the second day. It was nice to catch up with him after we played together in the Politiken Cup and Olympiad back in July and August.

5/7 - I came 3rd after losing to Moulthun in a close game in Round 4, and drawing with Jason and Anton on Day 2. I was happy with most of my games after a 3-month break from playing.

4.5/7 - three local players shared 4th-6th, with special mention going to Dillon - after drawing with Anton in Round 1, he did not slow down and scored 4.5/7 (PR 2033) against opposition averaging 1931 - his expected score was 1.75! He is coached by local trainer Peter Simpson (who has also been the trainer of Olympian Emma Guo, and has been helping many Canberra juniors over the years). 

Jason Hu was one of the players on 4/7 - he has recently been performing strongly, and in this tournament he managed to hold a draw against Moulthun, took a half-point bye in Round 4 due to illness, drew with me in Round 5 when he had a rather simple mate in the final position (instead giving perpetual check), and lost to Anton from a position of strength in Round 6. In fact, his biggest test may have been the drive to Canberra - on his last two occasions, in pretty much the same area on his way from Sydney he had crashed into kangaroos who had 'come out of nowhere'.

Dillon is on his right

Local junior Michael Kethro celebrated his 15th birthday on Day 2 of the tournament. Apart from Jason, he was the only player to play against the three IMs in the field.

The final crosstable:

Cross Table at round 7

Pos	T	NAME	Rtg	Fed	Pts	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	APRO
1	IM	Ly Moulthun	2512		6.0	21 1	5 1	7 ½	3 1	2 ½	4 1	11 1	1968.0
2	IM	Smirnov Anton	2402		5.5	6 ½	22 1	11 1	5 1	1 ½	7 1	3 ½	1781.9
3	IM	Ikeda Junta	2427		5.0	10 1	13 1	8 1	1 0	7 ½	11 1	2 ½	1995.1
4	--	Chibnall Alana	1882		4.5	19 1	7 0	20 1	13 1	8 1	1 0	5 ½	1844.0
5	--	Bliznyuk Andrey	1999		4.5	17 1	1 0	18 1	2 0	20 1	9 1	4 ½	1843.4
6	--	Hathiramani Dillon	1661		4.5	2 ½	14 ½	9 1	8 ½	11 0	12 1	13 1	1739.4
7	--	Hu Jason	2192		4.0	18 1	4 1	1 ½	BYE ½	3 ½	2 0	8 ½	1991.2
8	--	Press Harry	1903		4.0	15 1	9 1	3 0	6 ½	4 0	17 1	7 ½	1882.9
9	--	Yin Wenlin	2064		4.0	16 1	8 0	6 0	17 1	13 1	5 0	14 1	1679.4
10	--	Braguine Victor	1770		4.0	3 0	12 ½	21 1	11 0	18 1	14 ½	17 1	1647.4
11	--	Kethro Michael	1961		3.5	BYE ½	20 1	2 0	10 1	6 1	3 0	1 0	2078.7
12	--	Van Den Hoff Damien	1460		3.5	13 0	10 ½	14 0	22 1	16 1	6 0	20 1	1410.7
13	--	Booth William	1911		3.0	12 1	3 0	16 1	4 0	9 0	20 1	6 0	1785.4
14	--	Suptut Jeff	1817		3.0	20 0	6 ½	12 1	BYE ½	BYE ½	10 ½	9 0	1768.6
15	--	Badrinarayan Sankeer	1334		3.0	8 0	16 0	19 ½	21 0	22 1	BYE 1	18 ½	1306.5
16	--	Radisich Matt (W)	1620		2.5	9 0	15 1	13 0	BYE ½	12 0	19 1		1551.2
17	--	Hellmann Oskar	1483		2.5	5 0	21 ½	22 1	9 0	19 1	8 0	10 0	1498.4
18	--	Hummel Mark	1623		2.5	7 0	19 1	5 0	20 0	10 0	22 1	15 ½	1483.9
19	--	Yuan Ziqi	1053		2.5	4 0	18 0	15 ½	BYE 1	17 0	16 0	22 1	1286.3
20	--	Nwosu Nnaemeka	0		2.0	14 1	11 0	4 0	18 1	5 0	13 0	12 0	1578.1
21	--	Barker David (W)	1783		1.5	1 0	17 ½	10 0	15 1				1845.5
22	--	Jain Kamal	1694		0.5	BYE ½	2 0	17 0	12 0	15 0	18 0	19 0	1612.3

FIGJAM in January 2015

The four of us will be playing in the two big national opens of Oceania in January 2015.

Andrew, Junta, Moulthun: Australian Open in Castle Hill, NSW, January 2nd-11th.

First prize of $8000, a record in Australian chess! Perhaps it will also be one of the strongest Australian Opens ever, with 13 GMs, 7 IMs and 2 WGMs already registered!

Registered entries

The playing venue is the Castle Hill RSL Lyceum - picture from Western Sydney Academy of Sport gallery here

Fedja: New Zealand Open in Devonport, Auckland, January 1st-9th.

Although a continuation of the Queenstown tradition from 2006, 2009 and 2012 was not seen, playing in New Zealand is always an enjoyable experience, and Devonport looks like a beautiful seaside resort. There are already 4 GMs, 3 IMs and 1 WGM registered.

Registered entries

The playing venue is the New Zealand National Chess Centre - picture from official site

Gold Coast Open 2014

by Andrew

The Gold Coast Open took place last weekend for the 22nd time since its inception in 1993. Though numbers were down compared to previous years, the competition featured many strong players at the top, all vying for a shot at the $1500 first prize.

This year's winner was Brodie McClymont, with a score of 5/6. Brodie has become a real icon of Queensland chess in recent years, coming outright or equal first in just about all the QLD tournaments he plays in - even when the field is headed by IMs. This tournament was no exception. Although there were a couple of uncertain moments in his games (most notably against Alexandra Jule and James Morris, as he conceded in his winner's speech) he played at a high level throughout against very strong opposition and was a well-deserved winner. Half a point behind Brodie at the end were a pack of titled players: IM Richard Jones (Wales), IM James Morris (VIC), IM Moulthun Ly (QLD), and FM (IM-elect) Kanan Izzat (Azerbaijan).

Left to right: Brodie McClymont, Graeme Gardiner, Mark Stokes, Charles Zworestine.

As for my own tournament, well, it left a lot to be desired. Most of the time I was playing reasonably well but due to trouble thinking clearly I have had for a while I got low on time in two of my games and made some very costly mistakes. Unfortunately I also had to miss the first round of the tournament as I was stuck at Sydney Airport all Friday due to the power outage there.

Until I get my hands on some of Brodie's games or other notable games to put up, here is one of my better games from the tournament.

Full results can be found here.

Figjam Mid-Year Update

by Andrew

Greetings Readers, 

First of all, I'd like to say sorry about our general inactivity on here. I am going to try to post twice a week starting from next week (aiming for a Tuesday post and a Friday post).

Second of all, I would like to offer my congratulations to two of our contributors, Moulthun Ly and Junta Ikeda, who have been selected to represent Australia in the 2014 World Chess Olympiad in Norway starting the 1st of August! In the Sydney International Open (SIO) at the end of April, Moulthun and Junta both had fantastic performances, with Moulthun winning the tournament outright and registering his first Grand Master norm and Junta narrowly missing a GM norm but placing Equal 2nd and fulfilling the requirements for the International Master title. It will be great to watch how they go in Norway against many of the world's best. Before then however, they, along with two other members of the team, GM David Smerdon and 13-year-old FM Anton Smirnov, will be competing in the Politiken Cup - a strong open tournament in Denmark - as a warm up.

For more info on either of these tournaments, you can click on the links below:

https://chess24.com/en/olympiad2014

http://www.ksu.dk/politiken_cup/default.aspx?la=en

Thirdly, the Gold Coast Open is on this weekend. Moulthun, Jonas and I are all participating, with Moulthun currently being the top seed. Last year Moulthun placed Equal First but was unlucky not to win outright, missing a last minute opportunity in his final round game with GM Lubomir Ftacnik:

Ly - Ftacnik GCO 2013

62.g4? (62.Kh7 +- - e.g., 62...Kf7 63.g4 Kf6 (...h5 64.g5) 64.h4 Kf7 65.g5 or 62...h5 63.Kg6 h4 64.g4) Kg8 63.h3 Kh8 64.h4 Kg8 Draw agreed.

Hopefully there will be better news to report this time around - Moulthun is certainly the favourite to win this year's event. Either way, the tournament should be hard fought and enjoyable to play in as it has been in previous years.

Fourthly, Magnus Carlsen just won both the World Rapid and the World Blitz Championships, meaning he is now World Champion in all three of the major time divisions of chess - a triple crown, if you will.

Lastly, White to play and win. Highlightable solution below. Enjoy!

White to play and win - A. Wotawa 1960

1.f8=Q Rxf8 2.gxh5+ Kf7 3.Rh8!! (3.Rxf8+ Kxf8 4. Rf1+ Kg8 5.h6 (5.Ke7 h6 =) gxh6 6.Ke7 h5 7.Rg1+ Kh8 8.Kf7 h6 =) Rxh8 4.Rf1+ Kg8 5.h6! gxh6 6.Ke7 with mate next move.

Doeberl Cup & Sydney International Open 2014

Australia's two biggest open tournaments of 2014 are now over, and it was a good fortnight for FIGJAM, with Moulthun winning the Sydney International Open and achieving his first GM norm, and Junta achieving his IM title by scoring his third (and fourth) IM norm and surpassing 2400. Andrew had a great Doeberl but couldn't maintain the same level of play for the SIO, while Fedja wasn't in his best form with fatigue being a major factor, going into these events right after the KL Open.

Doeberl Cup final crosstable
Sydney International Open final crosstable

Although we've been writing as rarely as ever this year, Andrew plans to write a couple of posts every week, starting June. See you again soon!

Doeberl Cup winner GM Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu with guest Garry Kasparov

Our own shot with the 13th World Champion

Sydney International Open, =2nd-6th place: from left, Mu Ke (CHN), GM van Wely (NED),
Junta, GM Vajda (ROU) and GM Nisipeanu (GER) with GM Rogers and IA Zworestine

Moulthun giving his winner's speech