Peter Long on Chess

It is no secret that I have been working for almost two years now with current national champion Roshan Ajeet Singh and in the last few days have spent time with him preparing for the World Youth Championships to be held in Maribor, Slovenia from 7-19 November 2012. Roshan has just come off his exams - the reason why he had to opt out of playing at the World Chess Olympiad in Istanbul - and is clearly very rusty but is starting to pick up a little. I will also be going along as was my promise to him should he qualify and also become National Champion, and in the last two years he has been first U-14 champion and then, this year, even if only having turned 15, become both the U-16 and the senior champion. The preliminary participants list is out - see official website at  www.wycc2012.com  where they have a nice tool with the participants list viewer that allows you to group players by category and by country. Besides being a bit out of practice Roshan will have his wo

As I briefly mentioned in an earlier post, from 9-18 October I was privileged to be part of the media team at the Indonesia Open Chess Championship (IOCC) 2012 and it was a hectic time indeed! What surprised me what not so much the scale of the event but the huge number of people that were involved in the organising and it would be no exaggeration to say that practically everyone in Indonesian chess came together to help out. Indonesians are a tolerant people and I was really impressed at the pride and unity to make the tournament work! One challenge that Indonesia has always had was that because it is such a huge country it is often unnecessary for locals to look beyond the borders of a country spanning three time zones and with a territory of 1,919,440 sq km making it the 16th largest in the world. But I well remember the incredibly strong Indonesian teams of the 80's where they could beat just about anyone and were constantly challenging for top honours in Asia. The

Seems like New York is also the centre of the Universe where chess is concerned! Recently came across this book (no, I did not buy or read it) which documents a year with a chess team. From browsing however I think there is much to relate to if a coach, administrator or parent. But more to the point for the purpose of this blog post is perhaps the video story in this link on the BBC website as follows:  http://www.bbc.com/travel/video/one-day-in/20121012-new-york-citys-chess-scene

On the rest day of the ongoing Indonesia Open Chess Championshp (IOCC) 2012 being played in Jakarta, many players took advantage of the excursion planned by the organisers to nearby Bogor to visit the Presidential Palace and Botantical Gardens. As it was so aptly put when everyone assembled on the hotel lobby to depart: "Today is a holiday, tomorrow we fight again!". I don't know about the players but it was a welcome break after two successive days with double rounds and one more double round to follow the next day! From my experience coaching our Woman Olympiad Team, it is much better to be a player and I can certainly say the same once again now that I am experiencing being part of the huge team here that churns out the media component of a big event! For happenings at IOCC 2012, do visit the incredibly informative official website hosted at www.indonesiaopen.chessdom.com. It has regularly updated reports, numerous interviews with participants, of course the r

Official tournament website: www.indonesiaopen.chessdom.com Here you can also get a great number of interesting and often insightful interviews with the various participants. The opening ceremony was also covered at www.fide.com as well as numerous other leading chess websites.

The Indonesia Open Chess Championship will be held from 10-17 October 2012 at the Puri Ratna Convention Hall, Level 2, Grand Sahid Jaya Hotel, Jakarta. Once again organised by PERCASI (All Indonesia Chess Federation) with sponsorship from its President Hashim Djojohadikusumo, this year's second edition builds upon last year's highly successful inaugural event with a top class, diverse and representative field of old and young talent, both male and female, from as many as 18 countries! Our congratulations to PERCASI which has certainly put together the best International Open tournament seen in Asia in 2012! Hashim Djojohadikusumo, the PERCASI leader, at last year's opening ceremony  Indonesia does chess in the grandest possible fashion and no one who has ever played in an international tournament there will ever forget the experience, so the 27 Grandmasters playing including 9 rated 2600+ will be looking forward to the competition in more ways than one! Top s