Malaysian Chess Rating Page

To all the Malaysian chess players, do you know what is your latest national rating? What is your rating progress? 

To those who don't know, we can check our Malaysian chess rating online. Malaysian "otai" chess blogger, Gilachess, has created a page for a Malaysian chess player to check his or her rating progress. A couple of days ago when GiLoCatur checked the rating, the latest one was on April 2013 release. But now, the page has been updated to October 2013 release. As in his facebook, Gilachess is going to update for the latest January 2014 release soon. Thank you, Gilachess for updating the Malaysian chess rating database.

GiLoCatur hopes that the Malaysian chess community will make use the Malaysian Chess Rating to the fullest. It can be accessed from anywhere at anytime as long as the internet connection is in place.

Below is GiLoCatur's national rating.

1. Key in the page's URL, http://myrating.gilachess.com/

2. Key in your name, in GiLoCatur's case, SALEH

3. All the names with "SALEH" will come out 

4. Select your name

the Malaysian Chess Rating Page

Rating progress chart

 Not bad huh, GiLoCatur's rating graph as per above.

GiLoCatur's rating since Jan 2010 release

If not mistaken, the above rating database is missing three releases - JUL 2012, OCT 2012 and JAN 2013. It would be great if these releases could be added to. 

New www.catur.org Look

Have you surfed catur.org website?

What is the website is all about? Basically, it is the one-stop center for Malaysian chess blogs. GiLoCatur will visit the website as often as possible to check on new updates on chess by Malaysian chess bloggers. 

catur.org 2014 new look

The website has the new look as GiLoCatur surfed it several minutes ago. Thanks ANDREW aka Gilachess for the new look. Whaaaaaat? You don't know who Gilachess is?

Gilachess

JAN 2014 National (MCF) Rating Has Been Released Today

To all Malaysian chess players, have you checked your new national (MCF) rating?

It has been released today. Check out the Malaysian chess rating officer, Tse Pin's blog here to download the new rating files.

For GiLoCatur's family, it is one plus, two minuses and one unchanged. The change in the national rating of GiLoCatur's three children is based on one nationally-rated chess tournament in the past three months which is the Sepang chess festival Open. Since GiLoCatur did not take part in the chess tourney, GiLoCatur's national rating remains the same as of the October 2013 rating.

The eldest son, Fikri, had a "plus" performance in the tournament. He played one lower-rated opponent, one unrated opponent and four higher-rated opponents. He won both against his unrated and lower-rated opponents in the first and final round respectively. Fikri's results against his four higher-rated opponents are one win, one draw and two defeats. The win is against 1815-rated player in second round while the draw is against 1938-rated player in the third round. Click here to view Fikri's performance in the Sepang Open chess tournament.

Fikri gained 24 points in the tournament. Thus, his MCF rating which remains the same since April 2013 release i.e. 1624 has increased to 1648. His younger sister, Anis Fariha, who also had her national rating unchanged for three consecutive quarters could not increase her rating. Even though, her PMR exam completed much earlier that his elder brother, she has much much more to improve in order to gain more ratings by winning against higher-rated opponents. 

Similar to her elder brother, Anis played against one unrated, one lower-rated and four higher-rated opponents in the Sepang Open. She could win against the unrated and lower-rated opponents. BUT she could not win a single game against her four higher-rated opponents. She had two 1600-rated, one 1750-rated and one 1900-rated players to win against. Click here for her full results. Anis lost 19 points in her national rating from the only rated chess tournament she took part in the last quarter. Her last national rating of 1466 is now decreased to 1447.

If previously Fahim, GiLoCatur's youngest child, had an increase in his national rating, now he has a decrease. Fortunately, the number is less than the increase earlier. His national rating was 1529 in October 2013 release. In the new national rating release today, Fahim's new rating is 1523, a decrease of 6 points. In the Sepang Open which has no separate Under 12 event, Fahim had to play against three lower-rated and three higher-rated opponents. Here, is the list of all Fahim's opponents in the Sepang Open. Fortunately, Fahim had no problem winning over his lower-rated opponents. But Fahim still has problem and long way to go to beat his more than 300-ratings opponents. Among his three higher-rated opponents, two are rated over 2000 and the other one is rated about 1800. 

GiLoCatur hopes that Fikri, Anis and Fahim will participate in many rated chess tournaments both local and international in the next quarter. Fahim will be in his final year of the primary school education. He will sit for UPSR in September. Anis had completed her PMR and is getting to her upper secondary school. Fikri had completed his SPM and secondary school education. He is getting ready for his college education. So, he has ample time to catch up his chess before the hectic college life begin.

How about the Chess Ratings Mission set in 2013? Have it been achieved? And what is the mission for the year of 2014?

Only one is achieved. Fahim managed to get his FIDE ratings in January 2013 release. 

Therefore, the Mission is not much different for the year 2014. Ratings wise, the target number for Fikri to achieve is decreased from 1800 to 1750 and Anis is decreased from 1650 to 1600. As for Fahim, his target ratings is increased from 1600 to 1650. While for GiLoCatur still remains 1550. GiLoCatur would like to add a new mission which is to get a FIDE rating. GiLoCatur hopes that GiLoCatur can take part in a couple of FIDE-rated chess tournaments.  

GiLoCatur wishes that more achievements to come for Fikri, Anis Fariha and Fahim in the year 2014 including in chess.  

1st Leg KLK Sungai Siput at SMJKC Shing Chung - BB Photo Gallery

Open category - 1st Round

Under 12 category - morning 

Under 12 category

6th Round - Fong Yit Ho vs Syamaizar Lup (1/2 - 1/2)

Final Round (Open category) - Top two boards

Final Round (Open category) - Board 3 & Board 4

The seventh round

A Travelling Diary

It was Saturday, 11th Jan 2014

12:00 noon
Packing and getting ready for a car drive journey north bound..

Left home and drove towards SKBJ to fetch Fahim who is attending a program.


1.00pm
Arrived at an International university. Daddy and children walked to the food court. After lunch, daddy and the boys switched on the laptops, connected o the net.

The boys played online games and watched anime movies.

Daddy watched BGT YouTube after having several rounds at chess.com.

2.25pm
Mommy walked to the exam hall getting ready for the final paper to start at 2.30pm.

4.15pm
GiLoCatur and family hit the road once again. Leaving the university driving onto MRR2 highway towards Kepong and entered the PLUS highway at Sungai Buloh toll heading north bound.

6.15pm
Exited Jelapang toll and had a prayer at its musolla.

6.50pm
The daughter pointed outside while stopping at a traffic junction. Hurriedly, below picture was taken.

cloudy Titiwangsa Mountains

7.30pm
Arrived and checked in at the booked budget hotel. A room with two Queen beds was ready for a five-member family from Shah Alam. The boys instantly hooked up to the free wifi. They were very happy with internet speed.

Fahim in new hotel in town, just opened in one month

8.45pm
Arrived at a Tomyam restaurant. Had dinner with tasty "Siakap 3 Rasa" with a couple who is also passionate about chess. Shared stories and experiences on local chess scenes.

11.00pm
Drove back to the hotel. Before midnight, the light was out. Having a peaceful sleep getting ready for a tournament tomorrow. The first rapid tournament in the new 2014 year for the boys and only daughter.

What A Bag!

what kind of bag is this?

Have you seen a bag like the above picture? GiLoCatur have. GiLoCatur really impresses with it. Soooo creative. The above photo GiLoCatur took last year in July at KUSESS, the school of Anis. GiLoCatur believes the bag belongs to the oldest state chess association in Malaysia.

MALAYSIA Mampu Julang Piala Dunia!

Have you read the following article published in a local Malay daily newspaper today?

Berita Harian, 5th Dec 2014

Honestly, glancing at the newspaper stand this morning and seeing the above article, GiLoCatur freezes for a couple of minutes. 

Why?

GiLoCatur's fantasy thinking says, "YES, SURE MALAYSIA CAN!".

GiLoCatur's rational thinking says, "YES, SURE MALAYSIA CAN AND AGREES with the Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, " ... sekiranya semua pihak termasuk sektor swasta berusaha gigih merealisasikam impian besar itu." 

BUT GiLoCatur's reality thinking says, "HOW IT IS POSSIBLE IF MALAYSIA STILL FAILS AT BOTH ASEAN AND ASIAN LEVEL?". A "false hope, maybe?"

Anyway, GiLoCatur wishes that Malaysia will eventually at least once can play in the World Cup. 

What do you think?

GiLoCatur's Blog Visits and Page Views Analysis

One of GiLoCatur's new 2014 year resolutions is to become more active blogging. It is very obvious that GiLoCatur's blogging activity in the year 2013 was declining and at the lowest point. Part of the reasons might be two of GiLoCatur's children were sitting important examinations last year. Fikri for SPM while Anis for PMR. 

It has been more than 5 years since GiLoCatur created this blog. Let's do some analysis about this blog. 

5 years (2009 - 2013)

First, let's check the blog's number of posts or entries. 

Put 2008 and 2014 aside. 2008 is not complete blogging year. 2014 has just started.

In which year GiLoCatur was very active updating the blog? Which year has the lowest posts between 2009 and 2013?

It is no doubt that last year GiLoCatur's Blog had the lowest update. Only 52 entries had been posted. The highest number of entries had been submitted in year 2010. Hopefully, year 2014 will be a record-breaking. GiLoCatur's target is 380 posts. Can GiLoCatur do it? Let's wait until 2014 end.   

GiLoCatur uses Sitemeter to track the number of visits and page views of this blog. Just for a record, this blog's codename for the Sitemeter is s32gilocatur. 

Surely, many of you would like to know what the heck is Sitemeter.

Let's GiLoCatur provide the brief info on website visits and page views. Because these two will be the essence for next charts.

So, now you already know what is a visit and page view by Sitemeter's definition. What is the difference between the two. 

2009

GiLoCatur will use 3,000 as the benchmark for the number of page views.  In 2009, this blog had only 3 months not passing the benchmark number. It has the highest number of page views in November. The entries in this month is the second highest (39) in 2009. Why November had the highest page views in that year? The answer is most probably due to GiLoCatur's coverage and entries on wycc or world youth chess championship. 

2010

GiLoCatur's Blog enjoys improvement in audience visits and page views in 2010. For ten consecutive months since January in 2010, the number of page views surpasses the benchmark i.e. 3,000. In January, March and June, even the number had reached 6,000. In March 2010, GiLoCatur had little coverage on NAG. While in June the same year, the updates on the National Closed had attracted many blog visitors.

2011

In 2011, the attraction of this blog had declined from the previous year. It is most probably due to the number of of entry updates had reduced half from 357 entries to just 229 entries. GiLocatur's Blog had surpassed the 3K benchmark on visits only one occurrence which is in June.

2012

Surprisingly, in following year i.e. 2012, even though the number of blog posts had reduced again from 229 to just mere 111, the number of page views is over the benchmark most of the months.

2013

It is very obvious in year 2013, due to GiLoCatur's inactive blogging, the number of page views had dropped significantly to below 1,500 especially in the second half of the year.

Have You Backup Your Blog?

4th Jan 2014, Shah Alam

No chess tournament to participate today. GiLoCatur decided to make BACKUP of this blog. It is very important to do so. Anything could happen like your blog being hacked, being corrupted or incidentally deleted. It would be a nightmare especially you have been blogging for so many years. 

Like GiLoCatur, this blog had been started since mid 2008. It is more than 5 years. It has more than 1100 posts. Therefore, GiLoCatur should backup the blog. 

Are you a blogger? Do you know how to backup a blog in Blogspot? It is not that hard. Let GiLoCatur tell  you how.

Export blog option

Choose Settings in your blog, then click Other tab. 

You will see Export Blog option on the top under Blog tools section. Click the option, the backup process will start. Keep the backup file save.

The size of the file is not that big. As for GiLoCatur's Blog, it is only about 7.7 MB.

[GiLoCatur : Found an interesting article that might be very useful to the Blogspot bloggers. The article is how to download a complete backup of a Blogger blog. added on 4/1/2014, 2.15pm]

So, Happy Back Up! :)-

Fikri Versus Shukor, Then ... 5 Years Ago (2008) and Now (2013)

GiLoCatur just realized that GiLoCatur have known Abdul Shukor Arajah since 5 years ago. Below picture is the recorded evidence. Unfortunately, GiLoCatur does not know much about him except he is from Sabah and a good chess player. Even though sees him many times in the local chess tournaments, GiLoCatur never asks about his personal life and info.

On 2009 New Year's Eve, Fikri who was 12 years old then played black against Shukor. The result was 0 - 1. 

On 2014 New Year's Eve, once more Fikri played black against Shukor in the fourth round. The result? Still 0 - 1. 

Fikri needs to improve further his chess skills and knowledge and practice more and more in order to beat Shukor in chess. Will they meet again? Maybe. Just the mighty Allah knows. 

Fikri against Shukor ... on 31st Dec 2008

Fikri against Shukor ... on 31st Dec 2013