Mr Property Grandmaster

(My article on Datuk Tan Chin Nam first appeared in The Star newspaper on 17 Mar 2006, the eve of his 80th birthday. An updated version of this article will appear in the souvenir programme of this year’s third edition of the Arthur Tan Memorial Malaysia Open Chess Championship at the Cititel Hotel, MidValley Megamall, Kuala Lumpur from 21-26 Aug 2006)

ON MARCH 8, many people opened their copies of The Star to find a very prominent write-up on Datuk Tan Chin Nam in the Star Biz section of the newspaper.

In the write-up, he was described as a retired business tycoon and went on to relate how Tan started from humble beginnings and then made his riches from property development to eventually join the list of the richest Malaysians.

Datuk Tan Chin Nam, the ‘Father of Malaysian Chess’.

“Mr Low-Cost Housing” and “Mr Condominium” are just some of the nicknames that he is known by but, to chess players in this country, Tan is the “Father of Malaysian Chess.”

If it were not for Tan, there would hardly be a chess movement in this country. Although this game is still far from being popular in Malaysia, there is considerable support at the grassroots, as evidenced from the scores of weekend tournaments held around the country.

If you are addicted to allegro chess, which is chess played with a 25- or 30-minute time control, thank Tan for it. It was he who demanded that the World Chess Federation (Fide) in the mid-1980s recognise and popularise this mode of chess.

It would seem strange to any outsider that Tan could make demands to Fide and get his way. But then, over a four-year period – from 1982 to 1986 – he was the Fide Deputy President for Asia, indicating the influence he had on world chess.

In November 1995, he was featured on the cover of Chess Life, the official magazine of the United States Chess Federation. It was perhaps the rare but ultimate accolade paid to a man who had contributed much to propagate chess interest throughout the world.

Tan’s first brush with chess in Malaysia began in 1974 when he agreed to take up the post of president of the Malaysian Chess Federation. It was a role that he filled for over 10 years until he stepped down in the late 1980s.

Although he was made the federation’s first and only honorary life president in recognition of his contributions, he continued to play an active and supportive role in the background. Lately, Tan agreed to assume the president’s post again.

But Tan is, first and foremost, a businessman. His other commonly known nickname is “Mr Property Grandmaster”, a convenient marriage between his roles as a major property developer and chess enthusiast. There is a third side to Tan: that of a horse owner.

In the mid-1970s, Think Big was probably the horse that shot Tan to fame in the competitive world of horse racing. In more recent years, Saintly was another of his horses that found fame on the racetracks of Melbourne, Australia. Aside from these two horses, there were many others too that found fame or fell from grace – like Gufeld, a horse named after the late Soviet chess grandmaster from Georgia.

Edvard Gufeld the chess player was Tan’s friend and a man of rather generous proportions. Tan chose to name one of his horses after Gufeld because, well, its gait was rather similar to that of the grandmaster’s.

Tan will be celebrating his 80th birthday tomorrow. It is certainly a milestone for this man whom I have known for 32 years.

Datuk Tan, happy birthday to you from the chess players of Malaysia!

LINKS:

Tan still reaching for new milestones

The will to survive, capacity to trust

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