This month we showcase a game by Junior Tay of Singapore, who by scored six points out of eight for the North American Pacific Zone (NAPZ) team in the Interzonal 2000 match.  With this fine result against an all IM field, he attained his second IM norm. Junior Tay is 31 years old and works as a primary school teacher. 

He is married to Yip Fong Ling who is also a very strong chess player.  She has won the National Ladies Championship 3 times and has represented Singapore in the ‘92 Manila and the ‘96 Moscow Olympiads.  She even held Karpov to a draw in a 20 board simultaneous when Karpov was still FIDE World Champion.  So you can see that this is a serious chess family!  

In addition to Junior Tay’s chess activities, he also enjoys reading, especially all types of fiction novels.  In his “younger” days he used to play various racket sports such as squash, table-tennis, and badminton, but now his “sporting” activities are restricted to pushing wooden pieces around a checkered board and clicking the PC mouse.  

Although Junior Tay has known the rules of chess since childhood, he only began playing serious OTB chess when he was 16 years old.  His first competition occurred in 1986 at the National Youth Championships where he started well with 3 consecutive wins, but as he recalls “I was later brought down to earth by several National Junior players and finished with 50%.”  Encouraged, he began studying openings and has progressed ever since.

By 1990 he had made significant progress so that he finished 2nd in the Serangoon Gardens Allegro tournament and has managed to make the prize list in every subsequent local tournament he took part in.  1992 was a great year.   He met his future wife to be, captured 1st place in the National Rapid Chess Championship, and then scored 5.5 out of 9 in the Commonwealth Championships held in Malaysia (just behind a slew of UK GMs such as McNabb, Conquest, Miles, etc. and several IMs).  In ‘95, Junior Tay played for Singapore in the Asian Team Championships, and was also the Bulletin Commentator and Editor.  In the final round  he beat IM Boris Katalymov of Kazakstan and received the ASEAN silver medal for Board 4.  The following year, he tied for 1st in the biggest local event, the Cairnhill Open Championships.

After starting work as a primary school teacher, there was less time for OTB chess. Nevertheless, he coached chess and his young trainees emerged 2nd in the National Under-12 team championships and later went on to win the National Under-16 team championships 3 years later.  He also took a serious interest into chess writing contributing articles to the Singapore Chess Digest and eventually, in ‘97-‘98, becoming the editor of the magazine.

Junior Tay relates his beginnings in ICCF play in the following way. “Since ‘96 SIM Wang Mong Lin had been asking me to consider playing CC. After becoming frustrated playing senseless time trouble wood-pushing in countless local rapid chess tournaments, I seriously considered taking up CC. The final inspiration to play CC came when Wang gave me several Chess Mail magazines, in particular the issue which featured Ulf Andersson’s amazing win over the current CC World Champion Gert-Jan Timmerman.”  That was the final temptation that started his CC career. 

During this short time span he achieved various successes.  Playing Board 3 in the ICCF E-mail Team Championship Final, he finished third with 5/8 points. He won EM/M/A071 and qualified for the Email WC Semifinal.  He made his first IM norm in the EM/MN/021 and was invited to play Board 7 for the NAPZ in the Interzonals 2000 match.  As he recalls  “All of my opponents were IMs.  I really played my heart out in this event.  After the smoke had cleared, I finished with 6/8 surpassing the IM norm by a point.”   Presently he is inclined towards CC journalism writing extensively for CCN and is cutting down on his CC play.  Anyone that is interested in learning more about Singapore Chess, can check out his website at http://geocities.com/juniortay/

The featured game is Junior Tay’s win against Christov in the Interzonals 2000 match.  He considers this game as his best positional CC game thus far.  The game begins as a Sicilian, but takes on the pawn structure more typical of the French defence.  The game illustrates all of the key ideas and dangers in playing this type of position:  being careful about castling too early for Black, fighting for control of the only open file, and the merits/dangers of advancing the King side pawns when not adequately prepared.  The game analysis and comments in the brackets […] are those of Junior Tay.  I have included several additional comments that are denoted by VVP.

1.e4 c5 2.c3 Nf6 3.e5 Nd5 4.Nf3 e6 5.d4 cxd4 6.cxd4 b6 7.Bc4!?

 [Not a very popular line. A year ago, I faced this variation and got a bad opening against Ed Limayo.  7.Nc3 is  the main line]

7...Bb7 8.0–0

[Now to change direction from the game Limayo-Tay (ICCF EM?M/A071) which continued 8....Na6!? 9.Bg5! with a slight plus for White.]

8...d6! 9.Bxd5 Bxd5 10.Nc3 Bxf3 11.Qxf3 d5=

[This variation is not very promising for White. Black has traded off his bad "French" bishop and a pair of Knights, so he has a structural plus. White however, does have a lead in development. The semi-closed nature of this position would mean this factor is not so crucial.]