In Pursuit of Wisdom

Last weekend I played US National G/60 and G/30 championship at October 1st and 2nd respectively at Santa Clara Hyatt hotel. Bay Area Chess arranged these as usual in different sections. I made 50% scores in both of those at 1800+ (Open) section to my relief. My last month's tournament performance was disappointing (1 win and 3 loss) while this time in G/60 it was 2 loss, 2 win and in G/30 it was 2 loss, 1 draw and 2 win. With this performance now I am a bit relaxed and I think I can still carry on playing competitive tournaments for a few more years even if I don't hit the prize lists. Here is my G/60 result - https://bayareachess.com/events/11/usg60.php And here is my G/30 result - https://bayareachess.com/events/11/usg30.php With this, now I am inspired enough to teach chess to my son and other children from next week.

Last month just before Eid, we went to a quick weekend trip to Lake Tahoe to have some breathe out of my busy office works. And know what, we enjoyed the short trip! We stayed in the beautiful David Walley's Resort few miles from South Lake Tahoe. The second day we spent time in South Lake Tahoe, specially on Gondola Ride. Here is a video and some pictures of that beautiful ride which goes more that 9000 feet above sea level. Just after coming back and just before the Eid day, Ahyan started his first day at public school . Saiful visited us from Atlanta in Eid night and spent a few days playing around Ahyan and Suhaila. I took him for a sight seeing to Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. He bought an XBox Kinect for Ahyan.

Last week I finished Nine Tomorrows by Isaac Asimov which I bought along with a bunch of other books recently from Half Price Books, Fremont. One of the short stories there is The Last Question which Asimov wrote in 1956 and rates it as one of his most favorites. The story is such a master piece by the grand master of science fiction writer that I find my vocabulary falling short to praise it! It shows Asimov's depth and breadth of ideas and his love for twists! I took the whole weekend to get out of the aura of this story and yet haven't succeeded completely (the proof is that I am writing this blog post early in the morning while late for my son's school and my office)! I can't help but share with you the story here in case you wish to read it but forget because everyday life will keep you distracted from reading such a novelty and brilliance! Here is an HTML version of it - http://reviewsonly.blogspot.com/2011/08/last-question-by-isaac-asimov-1956.html Let me k...

Great news! My playing partner and gentle younger brother-like chess friend Abu Sufian Shakil has become International Master. Liza also became Women International Master, second only after WIM Rani Hamid. Moreover, Ziaur Rahman winning the 3.2 Zonal tournament will play the next cycle for World Chess Championship representing this zone. http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=179668 Shamima Akhter Liza became country's second Women International Master (WIM) after Rani Hamid, who won it in 1985, as she earned seven points from nine games in Asian Chess Zone 3.2 Championship in Sri Lanka yesterday. Liza and Ranasinghe of Sri Lanka earned equal seven points but the latter finished top by virue of a tie breaker. Liza had earned her first WIM norm last year during Six Seasons Women's International Rating Chess in Cox's Bazar. Apart from Liza, FIDE master Abu Sufian Shakil also earned his third and final norm of International Master from th...

Last weekend I was quite busy with the 37th People's Chess Tournament in Fremont Marriott. As it was a long weekend, I registered it online through www.bayareachess.com after renewing my US Chess Membership. After a successful World Cup Cricket 2011 opening ceremony in Dhaka where Bryan Adams, Shankar-Ehsan-Loy, Runa Laila, Sabina Yasmin et al perfomred in the midst of mind blowing fireworks, we gathered in Shahriar's house for the India vs Bangladesh opening match of the world cup in 19th February. He arranged lots of people and we had a nice time gossiping together (Ezaz, Amin, Dhanad, Sayeem, Wali Bhai, Sumit Bhai, Mamun Bhai, Dipu Bhai and some others). Although we lost due to a huge score from Sehwag (175) that took India's total to 370/4 in 50 overs, we gave it a fight by scoring 283/9 without being all out. That meant I didn't get much sleep for the next morning's chess game in the tournament at 11:30 AM.  I won the first game nicely, drew a lost game agai...

Today I found KChess , the chess software for Kindle in Amazon. It's built by Oak Leisure Systems Software and is available for $2.99 only. It has 10 levels of strength, level 1 being the easiest and 10 the strongest. I was surprised to see how good even Level 1 plays. I have won against that after some accurate play and had to play all through a rook end game to win against Level 2. I am now playing against Level 3 and looks like this is the level where I will be stopped for the moment. The app is surprisingly well designed. I wish I could save the games that I play - that's one thing that can be done as additional feature in future release of this app. I am so happy to get this. This game itself made me think again - Kindle Rocks! Update: After a few days, I started winning regularly against the highest level (Level 10). I have been playing it now in both my Kindle DX and the new Kindle 3 that I bought for Shusmita this valentines's day.

I won the round 2 of chess tournament in Salesforce.com a little earlier playing with black. My opponent was Ron Pragides who sits in seventh floor in the same building as mine. He is Senior Director of Software Engineering. Shishir and Maithili joined me to watch the game. The chess clock we had actually ran out of battery so Ron did an interesting thing. He downloaded a chess clock in his iPhone where we set 20 minutes for each of us. It served the purpose fine! Ron made the first mistake but I made a follow up mistake too to bring him back in the game. So it went down to Ron to make the final mistake by him through which I was able to mate him. Unlike round 1, this time I was ahead of time.

As world cup cricket 2011 is approaching, some interesting cricket jokes are also on the horizon. Here is one - I am eagerly looking forward to the opening game of 19th February that will be held in my backyard in Dhaka between Bangladesh and India!

I played the first round of the four round chess tournament in Salesforce.com. I won with White, although I felt I am out of touch by a good margin due to the lack of practice. My opponent was Didier Prophete who is PMTS and sits in 3rd floor in the same building as I do. Also I took lot more time than my opponent to move. However, I will do some practice before next rounds so that I don't make simple miscalculations. Soon after this, I exchanged the queens to make sure there is nothing left in the board except my Rook and Didier's Bishop while I have a bunch of queens side passed pawns to march for promotion. So he resigned here while I had some 3 minutes left in the clock as opposed to his 9 minutes. Last few days I finished Himu Rimande and Kichukhkhon by Humayun Ahmed.

The eve of last year and the whole new year 2011 so far, I have been occupied with my daughter Suhaila and shopping with Ammu for my brother Rasel's marriage. I used my second week of paternity leave from office to visit my Uncle, Aunt and cousins in New York as well as send my Mom to Dhaka with my friend Paul. As a bonus we got snow, lots and lots of snow and snowfall in New York! In that sense this trip during 11th January to 17th January was a highly successful one. Ezaz dropped us in San Francisco Airport early morning so that we could catch our Delta Airlines flight at 8:30 AM on time. Kakku received us in JFK airport, New York. in the evening. That very night there was continuous snow fall that we watched over the window and enjoyed. As usual Abir, Asif, Roton, Kakku and Aunt were highly delighted to see Ahyan and Suhaila. The next day morning I and Ahyan got down in front of Kakku's house to help him clean snows and take some pictures during that time. The pictures fo...

Happy new year 2011! Last year 2010 was a very important year for me primarily due to the birth of our second daughter Suhaila . The last few days of the year I spent mostly with Ammu and Ahyan shopping for Rasel's engagement and marriage. It's lot of fun. Also I thoroughly enjoyed the India vs South Africa test series during this time. Sreeshant excellent bouncer to make Jack Kallis helpless in the second test turning him into a C shape will remain in my memory as long as I cherish test cricket. Here is an important number in cricket for batsmen with some modifications from me as a new year gift for the readers - highest batting average. The traditional way of measuring batting average is to divide the total career runs scored by the number of innings he played excluding the not out innings. This way we know before getting out, the batsmen scores how many runs on an average. Forget about the Bradman's magical 99.94, then the good batsmen averages around 50 to 60 runs be...