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An exciting and somewhat surprising finish to the tournament, with the Vietnamese grandmaster Cao Sang taking the title on tie-break.  Cao never led at any stage and in fact was only on 2.5 after four rounds, but certainly “maketh”d the man by winning his last three games.  Cao shared the title with Indian IM Sethuraman …

I’m writing after the conclusion of round 7 and just before the start of round 8.  The pairings aren’t yet out, so I may end up cutting this post short as I keep refreshing the tournament site. I came into the event with the two contradictory aims of not losing any games and playing exciting …

Four rounds in, and my tournament is nothing special.  Wins with white and draws with black, all against lower rated players, sees me performing at level.  Some of the Aussies are having a tough time adopting to the Asian styles, however. I really have found through my chess travels that different countries and regions play …

Quite a remarkable run home for the Koalas (after unanimously realising our ignorance of the term, we decided to drop the ‘Klang Valley’).  We even managed to finish the teams event on board one, going up against the eventual winners in the final round.

James narrowly missed out on a board prize on board two, going down against some much-fancied opposition. Domagoj finished smartly too, picking up a crucial win for the team in our penultimate match.  Justin and Emma had a tough time of it, with many of our opponents stacking their teams by putting their top players on the bottom board.  Nevertheless, both performed above their rating.  I needed a win in the final round to take out the board one prize, but couldn’t grind out an opposite bishop ending past a draw.

And thus ends the team rapid tournament, on this, Malaysian Independence Day.  It also coincides with Fi’s arrival and thus, I predict, a new wardrobe for both of us.  Did I mention it’s the once-a-year Malaysian sales at the moment?

Round one of the main event tomorrow, and our Tasma crew extends to include Tomek Rej and Helen Milligan.  Great things afoot.

Things haven’t started well for the Klang Valley Koalas, perhaps aptly represented by the fact that none of us know where Klang Valley is.  We were the first top seed to drop points, drawing our match in round two, and things haven’t gotten much better.  We followed this up with a demoralising loss in round …

I’m writing this from the Cititel hotel in Kuala Lumpur, the venue for the 2010 Malaysian Open.  In stark contrast from my recent blogging contrast, I’ll be updating this daily (probably) with reports on the tournament and especially the Aussie performances.  We’ve got quite an army here, and are fielding two Aussie teams (with a …