Young Old Frees

December is surely a chess month in Penang with the Penang Chess Association organising their flagship events, namely, the Penang heritage city international open and the Penang chess league from the ninth till 15th of December. Of course, there were also the Penang heritage city international challengers open and the blitz events too.

I always make it a point to visit the open tournament for a few days in order to catch up with several chess friends, but my main interest is the chess league. This year, The Old Frees' Association was unable to enter two teams because some of the members were unable to commit their time, even for two days. So it was only one team this year, the Young Old Frees. But unofficially, the Free N Easy team was also an Old Frees team although the third and fourth board players were not OFA members. Important though, we still functioned as a group, together. Great camaraderie.

Free N Easy on the left were Terry Ong, Ung Tay Aik, Sunny Lim 
and Chuah Soon Pheng. Young Old Frees on the right: Ooi Peng 
Seng, myself, Chan Kim Chai and Chuah Heng Meng.

Chuah Heng Meng was a great stand-in for our team because our original first board player, Colin Chong, had a bereavement to attend.

As fate would have it, the two teams were paired in the sixth round. Everybody predicted a 2-2 draw but it was not all that plain-sailing. The first two boards were drawn but we traded wins on the bottom two boards.

(Much apologies for the poor quality pictures. My camera lens is spoilt and I was reduced to using the camera on the mobile. As we all know, mobile cameras aren't the best for taking high quality pictures.)

Some comments on the tournament itself. According to the organisers, it was a record number of entries this year with 99 teams. Many of the foreign participants stayed back for the tournament because they didn't have to rush south for the Johor open. This year, the Johor open preceded the Penang open. The Young Old Frees eventually finished in 14 spot while the Free N Easy finished in 45th position. Like the Young Old Frees, the Free N Easy team had quite a similar set of problem as Ung Tay Aik found himself having to attend to a bereavement in his family. Thus, he missed three games.