Penang Free School 1996!

After a long break, I'm back to write chess articles. I would like to start with a memoriable chess tournament which changing me from 'kampung' chess player to a tournament chess player. Here's an old article which I wrote but never being published anywhere.

Penang Free School Open 1996

My 1st tournament was in 1992, a rapid tournament at Alor Star, Kedah. I was in standard 2 studying in maktab Mahmud ( an arabic base school curiculum). In the first round I played against Cikgu Ajemi, MSSK chess coach and win on the black side. I played 4 rounds and then leave the tournament without completing 2 more rounds. Some kind of a childish attitude when you lost your games.

During my early days in chess, I only play chess with my family and friends during free time. My home was a place for friends to play chess because all of my family members including my cousins are addict to chess. But we never join any tournament until now! I was an exception.

PFS Open 1996 was always in my memory. This is my first tournament since 1992. Why I wait for 4 years to play in a tournament? The reason is because there is no open tournament in my hometown Alor Setar, Kedah since 1992. Further more, during my early days, I never play chess for MSSM. The reason is because my school didn’t have chess club or anything relate to chess.


Here’s a position of my game in final round against Ronnie. I was 19 years old at the time. Can you find the checkmate? White to move.

PFS Open. 24th March 1996.
Round 7. Table no. 2.
White: Shamsuddin B Mat Isa
Black: Ronnie Lim Chuin Hoong.


White to move. I played 41.Qe7 which is not the best. White can checkmate the black’s king in 7 moves. But I over looked it and lost the game. I got the 2nd place for under 20 in the tournament.

Can you find the checkmate?
(You can give the answer in the shout box)

Summary

What’s the benefit of the game from PFS Open 1996 which I shown up here? Since the date I got a confidence to play chess. As a result, I represent UKM since 1997 until 2000.

Did I improve a lot during 1997-2000? Not really much improvement except I only got a lot of experience. Why? It’s because I didn’t have a proper chess training technique. After 2002 I revised my chess games and saw the mistakes. I learned a lot from strong chess players (friends) about training methods and finally I got the key of a fine training technique.

Starting from 2005 until now I had been MSSMKL chief coach and had been teaching chess for kids and adults intensively. I would like to thank friends from MCF, MSSMKL, Intchess, Persatuan Catur Putrajaya, Minda Catur Enterprise and all chess friends for supporting me in chess training and writing chess articles.

I don’t have to write too much about my personal here. My next article will be focus on players with national rating 1200-1500. Advance article will be written by my collogues from Minda Catur Club. See you soon. Bye.