The Malaysian chess scene was poorer on 16 May 2007 with the passing of Dr Foo Lum Choon.
Junior chess players will not know who he was but older chess players will recognise Dr Foo as a pioneer among Malaysian chess players and organisers.
Dr Foo was 90 years old, long retired as a medical practitioner, when he passed away in Kuala Lumpur.
For many years, he was the president of the Chess Association of Malaysia, the precursor of the Malaysian Chess Federation. He helmed the CAM until it was deregistered in 1973.
In all my years associated with this fine game, I have managed to play with him only once in a tournament game. That was in 1974 when the MCF organised its first national closed chess championship at the FAS building in Kuala Lumpur.
I remember him well because in that tournament, he was the most senior among the players. He was a mild-mannered, eloquent, soft-spoken gentleman of the Old School and always with a smile on his face. But I’ve also heard people mentione that he was rather set in his ideas and obstinate to a fault.
At a crucial point in our game I was faced with a rather difficult choice. Inexperience told on me because after having decided on my plan, my hand lifted the wrong piece on the board and left my queen opened to immediate capture.
I glanced up at him and he smiled at me. He was willing to let me take back my move but I saw no point in playing dishonourably and I immediately resigned the game.
In that tournament, he came in second behind Choo Min Wang who is considered as Malaysia’s first national champion. The top four players from this event were supposed to qualify for the Malaysian team at the inaugural Asian team chess championship in Penang later in the year but both Choo and Dr Foo declined to play. I was sixth in the national closed event and thus, managed to find myself in the Malaysian team in 1974.
Dr Foo cast a great influence on Malaysian chess. In 1972, he led the first Malaysian chess team to the Chess Olympiad in Skopje. In 1974, he played in the Chess Olympiad in Nice. Malaysia did not send a team to Haifa in 1976 but in 1978, he went to Buenos Aires with the national team. His last appearance in the Malaysian team was at the La Valletta Chess Olympiad in 1980.
For a long while, he maintained his clinic in Jalan Pudu, Kuala Lumpur. He was always ready to whip out a chess board whenever chess players visited him in his clinic and he could go on and on to discuss chess with them. After he gave up his practice, he opened the Sakura Restaurant where he reputedly served the best nasi lemak in town. I never tried it.
I was speaking with Larry Parr, former editor of the US Chess Life magazine, a few days ago and he told me this little anecdote about Dr Foo.
It seemed that immediately after the Second World War, as a young medical officer, Dr Foo chanced upon a communist base in the jungle. There, he saw a big photo of a man with a moustache (Stalin) and another big photo of a bearded man (Marx). And there was a dismally small photo of Mao.
Immediately, Dr Foo guessed that the Malayan Communists were fighting for the wrong cause. Who or what were they fighting for? People they’ve never met before? It was clear in his mind that they were heavily influenced by the foreign communists.
So this was the Dr Foo we knew. He’s now dead and with him, a chapter in Malaysian chess history has ended.
[Note: One of his sons - Rudy Foo - was a rather well-known local tennis player.]
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