Salesforce.com Chess Tournament Round 1 - Ashik vs Didier

I played the first round of the four round chess tournament in Salesforce.com. I won with White, although I felt I am out of touch by a good margin due to the lack of practice. My opponent was Didier Prophete who is PMTS and sits in 3rd floor in the same building as I do. Also I took lot more time than my opponent to move.

However, I will do some practice before next rounds so that I don't make simple miscalculations.



Soon after this, I exchanged the queens to make sure there is nothing left in the board except my Rook and Didier's Bishop while I have a bunch of queens side passed pawns to march for promotion. So he resigned here while I had some 3 minutes left in the clock as opposed to his 9 minutes.

Great Chess Players In History (Non-English)

I got an email from the following blog owner where he started compiling all the great chess players career brief in short.

http://comentariosdeajedrez.blogspot.com/

While this is great, this is in Spanish or some other language as I have no idea. I wish I would get the English version of it somehow.

Bangladeshi GM Ziaur Rahman To Boost Chess In Malaysia

After the recent post by Susan Polgar on Niaz Bhai's chess initiative in Bangladesh, today I saw Polgar blogging on Zia's residency in Malaysia to boost chess development there. Wonderful that chess players in Bangladesh are part of news more frequently now alhtough we are far from the mainstream sports news like cricket and football.

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2010/02/resident-gm-in-malaysia.html

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2010/2/26/lifeliving/5738116&sec=lifeliving

GM Niaz Murshed on Regular Title Tournaments in Bangladesh

I was very happy to read Bangladeshi Grand Master Niaz Murshed's initiative on promoting chess in Bangladesh and subsequently effecting the chess trends of South Asia by arranging regular title tournaments at different venues in Bangladesh. Susan Polgar posted the entry below on a note by the first GM of South Asia Niaz (remember that Anand was second to him) here -

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2010/02/note-by-gm-niaz-murshed.html

You may also have a quick look at -

http://thefidetrainer.blogspot.com/2010/02/first-saturday-type-tournaments-in.html

Susan Polgar Writes on Rani Hamid

I was happy to see GM Susan Polgar writing in her blog on Rani Hamid, IWM from Bangladesh here.

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2009/12/grandma-chess-queen.html

I am privileged to have played with her for a while in Bangladesh chess federation in the 90s in different chess tournaments and practice games.

Kasparov Defeated Karpov by 9 - 3

As I easily predicted, Kasparov defeated Karpov with a good margin 9-3 in the rapid match that finished in Madrid today. Karpov is aged, 58 now, although Kasparov himself is no more young (46). They are planning play another match this December in Paris.

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-match-same-result.html

GM Zia and Enamul Amongst Top Scorers in Kilkata Open

After fifth round, GM Ziaur Rahman and Enamul Hossain of Bangladesh are jointly in second position with other top GMs like Nigel Short in the Kolkata Open with 4 points each. GM Sandipan is solely leading with 4.5 points.

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2009/09/sandipan-leads-kolkata-open.html

It's so great to see our GMs in the front line of the scorers!