Tourney back in KL

I RECEIVED a call from the Malaysian Chess Federation secretary earlier this week.

“Seng Sun, great report on the Selangor open tournament,” said Hamid Majid. Before I could begin to feel smug, he continued: “Now, you have to top that by giving equal prominence to the national closed championship.”

ZarulShazwan

Last year, Zarul Shazwan Zulkafli and his sister won the national closed championship men and women’s titles.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. The national closed championship is just around the corner. In fact, it almost always comes close on the heels of the Selangor open every year. This year, the national closed championship starts on May 31.

Last year, the MCF experimented by allowing the national closed to be held in Penang. I really cannot recall the last time this event was organised by one of the state affiliates. It was so long ago that nobody remembers. As far as the present generation of players is concerned, the national closed has always been held in Kuala Lumpur.

So it is again this year, back to Kuala Lumpur for the tournament. Why isn’t the event given to one of the state affiliates this year, I asked Hamid. I thought after the success of last year’s event in Penang, the MCF would have gladly allowed one of the other states to stage it?

It’s not so simple, replied Hamid. In the first place, no requests were received and in the absence of requests, the MCF would have to take it back. Moreover, it would be impossible to arrange at the last minute. Too many technical and logistical details to consider, he said.

In fact, when we were talking about the national closed championship this week, he was asking whether I would be interested to be the chief arbiter again. Thanks but no thanks, I had to turn down the offer. I would have loved to help him out but I simply don’t have the time.

Last year, I almost couldn’t be the chief arbiter either but at least, I had a few months of advance notice to plan my annual leave around this event. Plus, I had a great team of helpers. Not this year, unfortunately. I would need at least six days of leave.

Speaking of last year’s national closed, there were rumblings at the end of last year that the results of the tournament had not been rated by the World Chess Federation (Fide). The national closed championship is normally a Fide-rated event but it did not appear in Fide’s records.

Were the results ever submitted to Fide, people were asking in the chess-malaysia mailing list.

Let me just set the record straight here that yes, the Penang Chess Association did submit the results to the MCF and the MCF, in turn, had submitted the results to Fide. In fact, the submissions were made very quickly to meet the Fide deadline. The rating fees were also paid to the MCF at the same time.

So if there had been any delay in getting the national closed championship results over to Fide last year, it couldn’t have been the fault of the MCF. But all’s well that ends well. The MCF did send reminders to Fide at the beginning of this year and as far as I can see, the national closed 2007 now appears as a rated tournament in Fide’s April 2008 list!

In a way, I’m surprised that it has taken so long. The national closed 2007 was not the only event that was delayed. Other tournaments that were similarly affected included last year’s IGB-Arthur Tan Malaysian open championship, the AmBank chess challenge and the Rakan Muda GACC world inter-varsity chess championship.

Anyway, back to this year’s national closed. Yes, it will be a Fide-rated event, which means that international time control will be employed. There’s no half measures like using rapid chess time controls. Every game will be played using the standard 90 minutes plus 30 seconds increment per move. There’ll be two rounds per day and nine rounds in all, over five days.

The long time control should make many people happy, if they can afford the time to play in this tournament. There’ll be more than enough time to think over their moves, enough time to plan how to win and conversely too, enough time to agonize over your losing game.

The tournament will be played at the Wilayah Complex in Jalan Dang Wangi, Kuala Lumpur, from May 31 to June 4. Closing date for entries is May 25.

Last year’s winner of the men’s event was Zarul Shazwan Zulkafli while his sister Nur Shazwani Zulkafli was last year’s national women’s champion. It was the first time that a brother and sister had held the national closed titles simultaneously. Will they be defending their titles this year? It remains to be seen.

This entry was posted in Chess. Bookmark the permalink.