So many chess people have talked to me and asked about setting up a Malaysian online playing site similiar to ICC, FICS and WCL. I’m not against it but it is unlikely to succeed business-wse because of the expensive server cost. You’ll have to be prepared to pay about at least RM 400 per month [...]

Found yet another online chess playing site on the net. It’s called YupGames. It’s year another way to play chess online. These chess playing sites are fewer nowadays because of the cost of keeping them up. WCN is an example of the high cost bringing down the entire business.Anyway, YupGames is a little different and [...]

I’ve been asked this question a few times now. Can we start our own Malaysian online chess site?Actually Stonemaster.biz already has that service but it’s the email/correspondence style of chess where your time limit for a move can be from a few minutes to a few days. This type of service is easily implemented on [...]

I killed off some comments made on GilaChess on the 1st Russian Embassy Chess Open. The main reason is that that site is basically for reporting news. Starting a debate on who is the father of Malaysian Chess is definitely not what I want there. I also hate to practice censorship as that kills of [...]

Relaying this IM message I got from our good friend Norula:
ATTENTION TO ALL MALAYSIAN CHESS PLAYERS : new free chess playing site is found.. http://www.xymyx.com mari kita main chess di sana..
Have not tried xymix out yet. Probably tonight when I get home… Continue reading | 1 Comment

I just want to put out the question here. I really hate the World Chess Live interface. I remember as a new user logging into WCN it was so
user friendly that I started playing almost immediately after registering and downloading their user interface.
However with WCL, it’s been weeks since I first downloaded and ran the [...]

My sister used to play chess when we were in Secondary school. In fact we were presidents of our respective chess club. She rarely plays nowadays so it was a pleasant surprise receive an email showing a friendly game she is playing vs her friend.
She just played a4 going for an attack against Black’s King. [...]

The following game was played in the new World Chess Live site where a Malaysian defeated a GM in a simul.
The “Mysterious Malaysian” was the only one who won against the GM. The GM scored 18 Wins, 1 Draw and 1 Loss.
Take a look at the game and see if you can guess who this [...]

Practical chess is more important than chess being played with the use of computers especially for a child to develop skills in the game, chess champion Vishwanathan Anand has said.
He said this at an online media interaction organised by NIIT here yesterday.
[...]

Just another silly 2 minute game on WCN. Playing as much as I can before the 29 March May deadline. My opponent was 1825.
[Event "?"]
[Site "WorldChessNetwork.com"]
[Date "2007.05.20"]
[Round "-"]
[White "GilaChess"]
[Black "Hedges,Paul"]
[Result "1-0"]
[whiteELO "1648"]
[blackELO "1825"]
1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. d4 Qd8 4. c4 Nf6 5. Nc3 c6 6. Nf3 e6 7. Bg5 h6 8. Bh4 [...]

“More details regarding the new World Chess Live services are available at www.worldchesslive.com/wcn . This will also be the site where, effective May 29th, you will be able to transfer your existing WCN membership to the new World Chess Live service. May 29th is also the day that the existing WCN playing site and the [...]

I’m a bit late in finding out about this but my favourite online playing site, WCN is acquired by ICC. I don’t know whether this is a good or bad thing. I just hope WCN will still be around as I don’t play in the other play sites.
Out of my 3 services - [...]

Thanks to my games against Anima Sana, I saw a rise in ratings at WCN. Satisfying but it’s still 200 points short of my goal.
Continue reading

After my Tandoori chicken dinner I headed for the cyber cafe for a last chance to improve my rating. It IS the last day of the October.… Continue reading | 3 Comments

For the month of October I have an ambitious plan. To increase my online rating at WCN by 470 points.
I am targeting a rating of 1800 overall rating. My current rating is only 1331.

The plan is simple. As mentioned by the recent discussion in the Yahoo Newsgroup, I’ll take all my games played and [...]

Here’s a good measurement of chess stamina - Bullet Chess.
Last Sunday morning, I played online chess at WCN starting at 3am. I haven’t been playing online for about 2 and half weeks. Most of the games were bullet (1 minute chess) and I managed to break through the 1600 rating. However around 8am to 9am, [...]

Here’s my WCN rating played over the weekend. I couldn’t go to the record breaking UTP open so I played on WCN on Sunday morning and broke a personal record of sorts on WCN. I made it to a 1500 rating !!

As you can see my rating really plunged the 2 times I played [...]

I feel guilty as I have not used the free Gold account so generously given to me by a reader.
So last night I played a short 30-minute session at the cyber cafe for the first time using my “gold” account. Pushed my bullet rating up just slightly. Targeting 1500 next.
Continue reading