📍 KOTA KINABALU – Pinoy FM Nelson Villanueva wins the Open as Chess fever hit the EPF Building hard over the long weekend, with a staggering 564 players from Sabah and beyond battling it out at the Sabah Electricity Kaamatan Chess Festival 2026 (May 1-3). From lightning-fast Blitz to school team showdowns, this year’s fest … Read more
It seems like the major LLMs like ChatGPT, Grok, You and DeepSeek offered terrible sources citing the Malaysian Chess Federation (only listing it in their calendar) and news sites like chess.com. The two best sources were Gemini and Hugging Face which listed the blogs, websites, and mirror sites which was comprehensive. Maybe take note of … Read more
September 1 is the closing date to register for the Malaysian Chess Festival 2025. Any registration after this date will result in double charge! So register early and don’t pay double !!
If it’s not clear from the title of the website, it is about friendship. Yes, chess is naturally competitive but for me, I visit chess tournaments not for the competition but to see the human elements. People socialize, make new friends, and discover and share human experiences. Chess, is often perceived as a game of … Read more
The 16th Inari Penang Chess Festival: A Penang Chess Extravaganza What a wonderful 16th Inari Penang Chess Festival! It just ended! This year’s festival, which took place at the UOW Malaysia KDU Penang University College in George Town from December 23rd to the 27th, 2024, was an exciting showcase of talent and smart thought. There … Read more
click to see original photo I posted this on Facebook before but Facebook downgrades the resolution more than 4 times. Good for social media but nothing else. So here it’s posted in it’s full native size (click on link) which should be clearer. This is from the Malaysian Chess Festival 2023. More specifically it’s from … Read more
What I like about this website name is that it is also the acronym for the arguably the BIGGEST chess festival in South East Asia. It is also the oldest with the next iteration being the 19th edition to the Malaysian Chess Festival. Classical long time control, team rapids for Open as well as Age … Read more
How does one become a strong chess player? Everyone wants to learn a secret method for quickly improving their chess skills! Should you focus on tactics? How much time should you spend on endgames? Do you have to play over-the-board chess? We’ll address these and other questions, as well as provide you with a concise … Read more
In professional chess, there is a job that frequently goes unseen but is critical to a player’s success: the “chess second”. This word refers to an individual or team who assists a professional chess player, notably during competitions.For example, current World Champion Ding Liren had Richard Rapport as his second during his fight for the … Read more
Grandmaster Sivuk Vitaly who is a familiar face in Malaysia now, having won both the Penang Open and Johor Open in past years, now is the champion for the Malaysian Open 2023. Four players tied for first place with 7 out of 9 points, but Sweden’s incumbent champion triumphed due to a better Buchholz tie … Read more