The National Age Group 2009 had just ended. I was not involved directly or indirectly - I simply too busy with my personal and family matters. However, I did visit my friend, Wan Ismail Wan Yusof who had travelled all long way from Kota Bharu, just to accompany one of his sons, Wan Muhd Imran who contested in this tournament.

When I met him and his son, it was already at the end of round 4. So we had some beverages refreshment and we proceeded to our main business, that is transaction of some chess books.
Wan Ismail bought "Beating The Caro Kann" wrote by Vassilios Kotroniasbecause he said that, his son has the trouble facing the solid like rock Caro Kann and yet there is so few players in Kelantan who adopts it regularly.

In the end, I sold 3 books to him because he badly needs some books as references for his son, including one of my personal books (not meant for my business) that is Sicilian Accelerated Dragon publlished by Batsford.

After that I helped him to get the bus tickets at the Putra Bus Station for him and his son to return to Kota Bharu the next day. Subsequenytly we returned to his room at the Pearl Hotel. There, while having light meals, I, by off hand, gave free chess consultation to his sons as regards to :-
i)the opening strategy and most common opening traps
ii)my personal pass experience,
iii) knowing the opponent strategy
iv) style of the great players - Karpov, Tal, Fischer, etc.

I stopped at about 11.30 pm when I had to go back to my house and wished him and his son good luck ( I still do not know the achievement of Wan Muhd Imran up to the point I am writing here in this blog)

Below is a part of Wan Muhd Imran's game which we discused briefly:
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 e6 7.f3 b5 8.Qd2


Here I explained that, the sharpest is actually 8.g4 whereby black must choose between:-
a) the sharp and quick Queenside counterplay approach by 8..Nfd7 follows by Nb6 and N8d7, Bb7, Rc8 etc; or
b) the temporary stopper 8..h6

In the actual game Wan Muhd Imran played something like 8...Bb7 9.0-0-0 Be7 . (Well I do not remember exactly the move order, but it is something like this, whereby I had to critic the move Be7 as this is normally delayed) The game sontinued (after g4 ) with Nfd7 follows by Nb6, N8d7 and Rc8 without touching the f8 Bishop yet. And now, any act leaving the knight on c3 (example Qf2) is naturally answered by the thematic exchange sacrifice Rxc3 follows by Na4, Qa5(or c7), Ndb6 or Ndc5 , 0-0 follows by Rc8 pressuring white's shattered Queenside. (See for example Movsesian vs Kasparov; Bosna Super GM Sarajevo 2000)

Well, as my explanation was made off hand, therefore, I cannot produce all the details of analysisi here. However, readers who love to play the English attack against Sicilian Najdorf Scheningen or the defender of Najdorf Scheveningen on the blackside may look into the details from the following books:-

1. The English Attack - Sammalvuo Tappani
2. Play The Najdorf Scheveningen Style (EVERYMAN)
3. Kasparov's Greates Games Vol 2 (Igor Stohl) - GAMBIT

Chess video mentioned on
[Letsplaychess.com Chess video forum]

Exchange sacrifice on c3 in Sicilian: Movsesian-Kasparov