Tonight I’m back to the Mamak stall to make some updates to my website. Didn’t do much except check my email and change the GilaChess version 2 template. Opted for a cleaner look and a wider screen format to fit in more content. Wider format is better to show the crosstable results. The previous template [...]

I only reached 1700 on WCN once before. This morning was the second time!
Still not quite 1800 yet but I’ll have to be happy with it for the moment.

I haven’t played online for a almost 2 weeks now. As most of you know, my favourite online playing time is Friday nights.
I attribute the better [...]

Last week was a busy week. I only had time to go online today to play a few bullet games at the cyber cafe. Manage to maintain my average rating - 1600 overall which is ok. Still 200 points from my target.
I went to PC Fair today at KLCC convention hall. Saw a great deal [...]

I may be a Patzer but I am a decent web programmer.
One of the perks of a programmer is that I can add lots of cool web tools to my blogs that most other chess bloggers do not have. (when I have the time to program that is :))
Take for example this PHP/Flash graph I [...]

As I feared 1700 rating is a little over inflated and it lasted only 2 days. Those lucky games should not count. Also, many lost games from bullet also contributed in pulling the overall rating down
I guess my real overall strength is probably only 1600+ at the moment. 200 points to go!… [...]

Reached 1700 at last. I have to admit I cheated a bit by picking players that I was confident of beating. I relied too much on my opponent falling into my cheap trick variations in bullet games. I scored 3 lucky wins against higher rated opponents in my standard (20 mins) games.

Still it looks nice [...]

That’s part of a lyric from a song I listened to when I was a teenager. (anybody know the title?)
It’s also best describes my WCN rating these past few weeks.
I am still trying hard to reach the elusive 1800 rating. That target will still be the main objective this month but I think l’ll [...]

I’ve been using Google docs these past few weeks and it’s fantastic. I love the collaborative feature and the idea that I can edit my documents anywhere (as long as there is internet connection). You just need a free GMail account in order to use this service. YOu can find it at http://docs.google.com.
WCN Rating graph [...]

Previously I only had a rating of 1333 for my standard. I really hate to play in time controls that are more than 5 minutes because there is a tendency that you will be pitting your skills against a computer engine.
Last night I had no choice and had to play more standard time control (20 [...]

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.
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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

Failure. My targeted 1800 rating at WCN could not be reached.
In fact my bullet rating is still pathetic 1460 .
At least, my blitz rating has risen to 1727.
I discovered that 10 minute chess is still considered only ‘blitz’ and so I did not play any standard game time control to increase my Standard [...]

My bullet rating has dropped to 1463 but my blitz rating at WCN has increased 1683. My overall rating has dropped to 1453.
It’s certainly going to be hard to reach 1800 rating by the end of this month.
I’m learning how to create exercises or puzzles using Chessbase 9 where I use the position [...]

Played some more at WCN and 1500+ seems to be the highest rating I can get at this moment… Continue reading

Seems like my rating has levelled off at around 1547. I guess that should be more or less my current strength now.
Now it’s time to bookup and repair much of my opening weakness. I found some common questions to certain variations. Chessbase has this great feature in generating opening reports with statistics and best lines. [...]

Not playing on WCN tonight. Playing some friendly games vs another fellow chess enthusiast. Same place - Burger King KLCC (or maybe Burger King at K-Avenue )… Continue reading

Last night I was in the cyber cafe for several hours watching game 4 of Topalaov-Kramnik. It was also the first session in my quest to push my WCN rating to 1800. The deadline I give myself to achieve it is end of October. Compared to my previous rating it is now up by 187 [...]

Last night I met and played some friendly blitz games with a fellow chess enthusiast at Burger King, KLCC. I felt it refreshing to play an actual human player instead of the faceless strangers on the Internet. I won more games than I lost because my opponent fell into all my “cheap tricks” openings I [...]

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.
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