Justin's Chess Journey

Category: Chess

  • Chess Journal – Day 5

    Chess Journal – Day 5

    It’s a happy month, not only for me but for the whole family.

    My eldest, Maryam Khadijah, received her initial rating and put her in the first spot for U12 girls in Malaysia.

    It’s just an initial rating, and it will fluctuate; meaning that she will be dropping her ratings due to her trainings.

    Nevertheless, I am very proud of her. Recording this achievement here serves as a reminder of where she started.

    Maryam and yours truly; our very first “official” match. A simul game played at coach Dzuhairy’s center.

    💓Why I love chess?

    I love to teach chess; does this counts? It feels good to see students understanding concepts and applying it in their games. It feels awesome to see students are able to understand theoretical moves – instead of memorizing they understood why such move is considered as “theory”.

    White to move. What is the “best move” here?

    Consider the above position, taken from the famous French Defense Classical Variation. Nearly all of us would play 6. Bxe7 without missing a heartbeat. However, aspiring young players must know what this move is played faster than the bullet train in Tokyo.

    Stockfish 17.1 agrees. The big question is – WHY?

    To understand the move, one must fully understood the concept of good and bad bishop – bad bishop are those who are blocked by it’s own pawns, good bishop is the opposite. White is exchanging his “bad bishop” with black’s “good bishop”, thus giving white a better minor piece.

    But why second choice 6. h4, though? Some engine prefers this move (it’s called the Alekhine-Chatard attack, but who needs details, yeh?) because it gives white activities should black accepts the gambit pawn; which is an attack on the kingside via the h-file.

    Imparting this knowledge to the young players brings joy to me; especially if they uses it in their own games.

    🛠️What I worked on today

    My Habitica character lost it’s golds and experience because I haven’t been training much lately. Procrastinating is such a pain.

    I did trained my knight+bishop checkmating pattern, though. Still got it!

    Speaking of working on one’s chess, I had a quick discussion with one of my hero, IM Mas Hafizulhelmi. He reminded me that the hardest part of training chess is not to know what to train, but to start training itself. It hit me like a truck; maybe I’ve been hiding behind excuses for too long.

    Perhaps I might be playing in future tournaments? Who knows?

  • Chess Journal – Day 4

    Chess Journal – Day 4

    Day four!

    It has been so many days since I last updated this journal – just can’t seem to find the motivation nor the reason to do so. I don’t see a point, actually.

    But hey, it’s part of my “chess tasks” so I might as well continue doing it seeing that I’ve just wasted my time playing blitz and bullets on Lichess lul.

    💓Why do I love chess?

    No matter what “style” we have, everyone who plays chess will find joy in the romantic-era attacking. I am not an exception – the swash-buckling attacking style does brings joy to me. Take this position for example.

    Magerramov – Kasparov, 1977
    Black to move

    What did the great Kasparov played? Well, the king is in the center, so he went for the throat.

    19. … Bxf3!!
    20. gxf3 Qh4+
    21. Rf2 Nxd4+
    22. Be2 Nf3+
    23. Kf1 Qh3+
    24. Rg2 Nh4

    The rest of the game is an easy win for Kasparov; given the activity that black has. You can check out the rest of the game here.

    🛠️What I worked on today?

    As usual, I’ve been demotivated myself and didn’t do anything except for playing online blitz against random players. It irks me to know that I played blitz – because I am against playing blitz when one is trying to improve their chess.

    I guess I am probably cursed? I dunno.

    … and we went to the Malaysia Chess Festival 2025 held in KL Gateway Mall.

    Will probably write about it in another post; the visit brought some memories back.

  • Chess Journal – Day 3

    Chess Journal – Day 3

    Day three!

    Though it’s not literally the third day, I’ve been procrastinating during the weekend. I blame it on the tournaments (not me, but my daughter’s) and the classes that I had to teach.

    I enjoy teaching chess, I really do. It’s just that sometimes I don’t feel like I am a good coach, that sometimes I fumble, and not able to convey whatever that I have in my mind.

    Perhaps my thought ran too fast, maybe I need to slow down.

    💓Why do I love chess?

    The ideas behind each move in the classical games – those are the things that I truly, truly love.

    I marvel at how simple the ideas are – during my younger days I would read the annotations and thought to myself “this is super simple. Why didn’t I think of it?”

    Capablanca – Corzo, 1901

    One example is in Capablanca vs Corzo, Havana 1901. In the above position, Capablanca crafted a very, very simple plan indeed. He played 28. g4. His plan? It’s to simply to create a passed pawn on the kingside. So the game goes

    28. g4 fxg4

    29. Bd3!?

    Black’s g-pawn will certainly fall, so he aims for the g6 pawn, trying to create a passed pawn. Corzo played 29. … Nf5, overlooking the good move 29. … Ne4! maintaining equality.

    Capablanca simply took black’s g-pawn, black took white’s d-pawn, allowing white to capture on g6 and thus creating his own passed pawn.

    29. … Nf5?

    30. Kxg4 Nxd4

    31. Bxg6

    The position after this is simply winning for Capablanca; the bishop and pawn not only created a barrier to stop the black king from coming over; the knight is not strong enough to stop the passed pawn and attack on the queenside.

    You can view the rest of the game here. I might do a short video on this endgame because it really fascinates me at how simple Capablanca’s strategy was.

    Why don’t I have simple thinking process and strategic understanding like that in my games? 🤔😅

    ⚒️What I worked on today?

    Just for fun, I created a new Lichess and chess.com account. Why? It’s because of a silly conversation my family and I had with my daughter’s coach. She’s from Indonesia and told me that there’s a supernatural creature named “Babi Ngepet”. It requires two players – one is to guard a flame while the other one turns into a pig and steals people’s money. This pig-guy will turn into a man and loses his supernatural abilities if the flame were extinguish so his friend must make sure the flame remains burning.

    Not sure if Dark Souls 3 is inspired by this, or the other way round. Haha

    Imagine Dark Soul’s bonfire, but used to protect supernatural pigs.

    So the new account’s name is B4biNgepet, on both platform. Had to be a little bit creative due to the original name already taken.

    Well jokes aside, I also focuses more on endgames, not for me, but for teaching my students. One of the exercise that I enforce is the bishop and knight checkmate – must do it under one minute.

    Feel the pain!

    🎉We have our first Grandmaster!🎉

    Yeoh Li Tian has manages to break the 2500 rating point, achieved the GM norm previously and as of August 2025, he is entitled to receive his Grandmaster title.

    This makes him the first grandmaster from Malaysia!

    I really hope that many more grandmaster will come.

    Congratulations, Li Tian!

    Shameless claim – played him once and drew. This was 5 years ago, September 2020.

    Hey, I might even share the game I played with IM GM Yeoh Li Tian on September 2020!

    It’s a simul game, so he was not playing on his full strength. That explains the draw. 😁