Lim Zhuo Ren Chess

Hi again, The topic for the Oct-2017 Intake Class today is pawn majorities. The examples you see in the class feature the Q-side pawn majority. I managed to find a game I played when I was 14 in some Age Group tournament. It just shows how White created a pawn majority on the Q-side by trading his d pawn for Black's c-pawn. And then proceeding to push his pawns to create a passed-pawn. The passed pawn in turn tied down the Black pieces, after which White just had a free hand to do whatever he wanted. The game can be seen here

The Topic for the Intermediate class for Avant Garde Chess Academy this week is IQP. Here is a game where I played against the IQP against a 2350 player in 2016. Some general comments on playing against the IQP is you want to trade pieces because the Isolated pawn becomes more of a weakness as more and more pieces come off the board. You will have to neutralise the activity that the IQP gives your opponent and then enjoy the benefits in the endgame. In the game I'm about to show you, my opponent had no chances to create meaningful active play against my position. In fact, he never had a chance to create active play because of some opening inaccuracies. Hope you enjoy the game here

Hi, recently we started an online chess academy and we had our first classes. I wanted to provide something extra for those who joined and also for the enjoyment of others. I decided to show some of my own games where I applied some of the themes and topics taught in the class. So the past few topics have been about openings: development, centre control and King Safety. So, I am going to show a game where I sacrificed some material for positional compensation in the form of good centre control(with pawns), more active pieces, safer King, and also easier play. This game was played in the Malaysian Masters in 2012. I was playing Black and I was feeling abit adventurous during the game. I had just studied the Caro-Kann and played it for the first time in a classical time control game. The game can be seen here Even though I lost, I hope you take away the lessons from this game about centre control and King safety. And of course, Don't blunder your QUEEN!!

I lost round 6 with Black again and then won round 7 with White and then lost round 8 with Black. All my 8 opponents were IMs or GMs. And in the last round, I had White vs Dmitri Shevelev (2314). I had to win this game to get the IM norm. And he was the only non-IM I played. It was nerve-racking. I had scored 3.5/4 with White against IMs and GMs in that tournament prior to that game. I had WHITE for this game. I should have felt confident but I was very tense, I kept telling myself just play and focus and do your best. I just wanted to start the game immediately and focus. However, my opponent came about 40 minutes late and I was wondering what would happen to my norm if I won by default. I was pacing up and down. I was trying to calm my mind down during that 40 minutes. The game was super up and down. There were risky decisions, an unsound exchange sacrifice, and chess blindness. My opponent even had a perpetual in an objectively winning position. I had tears in my eyes when I rea...

After the draw in round 2, I played IM Aman Hambleton, rated 2436. Wee Zhun told me he is a famous player on twitch where you can watch him play. His bullet rating was 3000 or something ridiculous like that. The way I prepared, ironically was by seeing his Bullet and Blitz games online. And I noticed that it was possible he might play the hedgehog since it occurred a lot in his bullet games. So I studied the hedgehog structures from the Book "Chess Structures' by Mauricio Flores Rios which was given to me as a gift by Kaushal Khandhar for beating GM Srinath Narayanan in a chess camp organised in Sept 2016. I spent about 5 hours going through the ideas and the sample games. My game followed one of those sample games up to move 17 upon which he deviated. This was the first time I played this opening and I was just trying to recall all the ideas and pawn breaks and figure out which plan to execute. It was a tense game after that but I managed to pull off a win. Click here to ...

So I'm finally starting my story about the Millionaire chess Open 2016 in US. I tried to focus for every game and play as best as I can. I drew in Rd 1 against 2536 GM Chirila Ioan-Cristian after suffering a worse endgame. It felt like a close escape considering my opponent ended up winning the Under-2600 category. You can see his story here . I was really impressed with the way he creates winning chances with the Grunfeld, an opening which I always had trouble learning. I was so impressed that I recently played the Grunfeld myself vs an IM. I lost the game but It wasn't because of the opening. I was happy about the result in round 1. But I knew that it can all come undone if I lose the next round. 0.5/2 isn't so appealing even if its a draw with a GM. In round 2, I went into the game with the same mindset of playing my best and just fighting as much as possible. Click here for Round 2 GM Magesh vs Lim Zhuo Ren

This was my win vs IM Reddy from Malaysian Open 2016. I have done some annotations with my thoughts during the game. I was playing Black Click on Reddy vs LZR

Hi, I haven't been posting for one year. I remember I started this blog to sort of tell you how I have been training (its been hit and miss sometimes). And documenting what I was doing to prepare for some tournaments in 2016 (specifically Malaysia Open in August 2016 and Millionaire Chess Oct 2016 in USA). So training started in July 2016 and ended in Oct 2016. I did achieve my 2nd IM norm in USA after all that hard work. I had every intention of posting about it together with some games so I guess one year late is better than never. Also, recently I saw some positive comments about some of the posts and someone contacted me personally saying they enjoy some of the content. It is nice to see people appreciate the content and find it helpful. This gives me motivation to continue and I will try and be more consistent this time around. I will be posting some games with annotations for the next few posts.