In Pursuit of Wisdom

Official BABA Election Results from The Election Commissions: Dear Bay Area Community Members, Thanks to current BABA EC and BOT committee, BABA 2014 election was held at Santa Clara on Dec 15, 2013 in presence of community members.  The election was held for 2014 BABA EC Panel of President, Vice President and General Secretary, as well as two vacant BABA BOT (Board of Trustees) positions.   We are pleased to announce the election of Mahbub (Mark) Rahman of San Jose and Mashuque Rahman of San Jose to BABA BOT for a term of three years from  Jan 1, 2014 .  We are also pleased to announce that the panel consists of  Helal Chaudhury of San Jose as President, Mahbub Alam Nizam of San Jose as Vice President, and Quazi Shahriar Rahman of Fremont as General Secretary was elected.  This panel has selected the following members as 2014 EC committee :   1 Hela...

I just paid off my Honda Accord 2009 LX. Hurray! Now time to start looking for Honda Pilot as we need a bigger car.

In the 9th and final round of tuesday night marathon, fall 2013 I won against Oleg Shakhnazarov (USCF rating 2187) who was solely leading the board with 7 out of 8. Natalya won a seemingly lost middle game against Brendan La Counte and hence thanks to my victory against Oleg, became champion with 7.5 points out 9. Oleg and I are runners up with 7 out of 9. In 3rd board IM Eliott Winslow defeated Ivanov and hence he is one of the several in joint 4th position with 6.5 out of 9.  I have been playing tuesday night marathon for more than a year now in Mechanics Chess Institute, San Francisco which just walking distance from my office. I never could be part of top 10 earlier. And now this time runners up! I am very happy with my performance although I believe I was very lucky last 3 rounds. For example, in this final round Oleg started a wild aggressive attack in the king side, being black and all his pieces undeveloped which was the result of a poor unorthodox opening. So as...

I and Ahyan played CalState Class Chess Championship 2013 in Under 2000 (1800-1999) and Under 1000 (600-799) sections respectively. Ahyan's game was August 31st, 5 Round swiss. My games were Sept 1st and 2nd with 6 round swiss. Ahyan didn't do good this time ending up with 2 points out of 5 where 1 point is from bye, 1 from win in the last round and 3 losses. I played well and became 3rd in the U2000 section getting $200 in the process as prize money. With this my post event tournament rating jumped from 1870 to 1924. Here is the final standings of all the sections and you have to scroll down a bit to find section A (1800-1999) result. In the open section IM Ricardo De Guzman won the trophy. I didn't notice earlier but I see now that I have a  FIDE rating of 1739  since last August 2013. So my next target will be to increase the rating and cross the 2000 barrier. Here are my 6 games that I played in this Labor Day Weekend Tournament. Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Ro...

I am reading Isaac Asimov's autobiography I.Asimov: A Memoir with immense interest. In the first quarter of the book, I came into a short chapter called Chess. I can't resist myself but share it with you here - Failure at physical sports has never bothered me...What bothered me, though, was my failure at chess. When I was quite young and had a checkerboard, but no chess pieces, I read books on the game and learned the various moves. I then cut out cardboard squares on which I drew the symbols for the various pieces, and tried to play games with myself. Eventually I managed to persuade my father to get me real chessmen. Then I taught my sister the moves and played the game with her. Both of us played very clumsily indeed.  My brother, Stanley, who watched us play, learned the moves and, eventually, asked if he might play. Ever the indulgent older brother, I said, "Sure," and prepared to beat the pants off him. The trouble was that in the f...

Ahyan won another Quad in Weibel School arranged by CalNorth Youth Chess. He was in Quad#23 scoring  2 wins and a draw . As a reulst he got his third trophy. Raisah and Zayaan also won their respective groups -  Quad#10  and  Quad #11      I was giving live commentary on top board of Quad#1. Here are Ahyan's first and third games. The second game was a draw by repetition.

Today Ahyan won his first championship trophy in his life. He won all the 3 games in the Bay Area Chess Quad in his group that was held in Milpitas, CA at 20th April 2013. His opponents were rated 509, 414 and 715 respectively. Here is the first game that he wrote the chess notation while playing, so I could capture after the game.