SEPT 10 ― The Asian Amateur Chess Championships is now being played in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. There are 62 players from 11 Federations ― Brunei, Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Vietnam ― at, this event which is restricted to players rated 2100 and below.
Unsurprisingly, Malaysia with 14 representatives is the second largest contingent next to host Brunei which has 25, while the third largest is five from neighbouring Indonesia!
Given our low ratings, most of our players qualify to play to win a title. When the same championship was held in Malaysia a couple of years ago, the late Ahmad Fadzil Nayan emerged champion and then built on this rare local success to make a breakthrough appearance as a full fledged international at the Tromso World Chess Olympiad in 2014.
Of the better known Malaysians, veteran Mohd Sapin Sabri is the second seed and Loo Xin Hao the fifth seed and there are also some active juniors taking part including Muhd Aziz Farhan Noor Akhbar, Chan Kim Yew, Camilia Johari and Rosamund Koo Wei Xin.
While the proximity of Bandar Seri Begawan and the familiarity of the food and culture must have been a factor for so many peninsular Malaysians to make the short flight, Brunei is still not cheap and the Asian Amateur Chess Championships is still an official event which needs entries made through the Malaysian Chess Federation (MCF).
There does not seem to be any selection policy regarding this event and this is not a bad thing if the interest of every Malaysian was properly facilitated.
Winning the Asian Amateur was something special for Ahmad Fadzil Nayan and I remember then that it was celebrated by the local chess community as a major achievement but perhaps that was only because it was won by a Malaysian on home ground. Still I would imagine that any Asian title should mean something especially when we have so little success in international chess!
Malaysia does not seem to have a shortage of young players able to seemingly go at the drop of a hat to play in international youth events though.
I saw this at the World Schools Chess Championship in Thailand, then at the back to back Asian Schools and ASEAN+ Age Group Chess Championships in Singapore and then again at the Asian Youth Chess Championships in Korea ― and I have been told of the intention of several of them to play in the coming World Youth Championships in Greece.
These are of course the usual suspects, but they do not necessarily participate in all the competitions; the main reason is they have school, but also because of the inconsistent policy of MCF where money matters more than development of talent and promotion of the game.
But I find it difficult to understand why no Malaysian went to the just-concluded World U-16 Youth Chess Olympiad in Mongolia as I heard that many were interested in going. Malaysia has participated in recent years and it is an event which we have even hosted before.
On September 16, the World Junior Chess Championship, both for Boys and for Girls under 20 years of age, will end in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia.
We will again have no players taking part in an event that is arguably ranked third in importance in the world and international chess after the World Chess Championship and the World Chess Olympiad. This comes on top of a worrying trend of not participating in either the Zonal Championships or the Asian Continental, both of which are qualifying events for the World Cup and World Chess Championship cycle.
Missing the World Youth Olympiad is one thing but having no interest in top events?
To start, becoming World Junior Champion immediately confirms a young player's talent and ensures both him/her a special place in chess history. I remember that the young Garry Kasparov, already by then one of the best players in the world, showed up at the 1980 World Junior Chess Championship held in Dortmund to complete his resume as World Chess Championship contender ― relegating the even younger British prodigy Nigel Short to fight the rest for second place.
I don't expect us to win this event but this is where our best young player(s) need to play to see where they stand in the world.
Now, of course, besides the World Juniors is another measure and that is to become the world's youngest grandmaster, usually achieved around 14 years of age, and amongst them are huge talents and potential World Champions like Anish Giri and Sergey Karjakin who never tried and also others like Wesley So who did not manage to win!
Of course we have to include too the Number One ranked male and female players, Magnus Carlsen and Hou Yifan, who were much too busy winning their respective World Championships.
For too many years now, Malaysia has been ranked 85th in the world and it matters not that is out of the current 172 countries with rated players that are also listed.
Because almost all who are ranked below us are either small Island states, African nations, and various Third World countries, too many of which are also members of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) to give a vote to help perpetuate the current leadership's hold on power and in fact in ASEAN, we rank ahead of Thailand (99th), Brunei (107th), Laos (142nd) and of course Cambodia which is not even listed.
We need a reality check beyond going to the World Chess Olympiad every two years and hope that the last round pairing will be favourable to us and as a result jump up a few extra places.
I have already said this before but is there any point boasting about how we finished 60th instead of the expected 80th or having a 100th place disaster? We have to stop fooling ourselves ― our best players need to get out there to compete with their peers, to challenge themselves, to learn from others and in doing so develop themselves and raise their game to the next level.
MCF, by deciding who with the money plays what and where, is doing a job that any idiot can do.
If chess is indeed a sport in Malaysia and it seems that as long that we have the SEA Games that from time to time includes chess, it kind of is, then MCF which is registered with the Commissioner of Sports, and affiliated with both our National Olympic Council and the Ministry of Sports, has as a core function organising its national team for international participation and to prepare the same with stated objectives.
Bottomline is that the national team, the top players and their results and world standing are the measurement of a national sports association.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
