Winds of change are blowing in the direction of the Malaysian Chess Federation.
SOMETHING is brewing this weekend in Kuala Lumpur and it will not only be the national closed championships.
The Malaysian Chess Federation (MCF) has been preparing for its general meeting for weeks. It has been confirmed that the meeting will be held this Sunday morning. The early indication is that this year’s meeting is going to set the change in direction of the MCF for the next few years.
Datuk Tan Chin Nam, who turned 82 last March, has spent almost half a lifetime in this sport.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s not going to be anything earth-moving. Nevertheless, it will still be significant enough because of the impending retirement of Datuk Tan Chin Nam from the helm of the Malaysian chess scene.
Tan turned 82 years old last March after almost half a lifetime of involvement in a sport that he loved next to horse-racing. He is still the honorary life president of the MCF but in the past few years he had been lured back to play a more active role in chess again. In part, this was because the federation could not find a person dedicated long enough to the game after Tan Sri Sabbaruddin Chik had stepped down as the MCF chief.
In a way, this had been rather unfair on Tan but I suppose he was also relishing the renewed challenge as a diversion from his daily routine. Under him, the MCF had organised the annual Arthur Tan memorial Malaysian open chess championship every August to honour his son.
In 2004 when this tournament was first held, Tan had mentioned that it would be held on an annual basis for five years.
This August, the fifth edition of the Arthur Tan event will be held. It’s hard to believe that five years had passed by so quickly. If Tan is true to his words, this will be the last of the Malaysian open championship in its present form. Chances are that he will want to go out in a big splash with an equally big tournament. That’s probably a piece of good news for chess players in this region. The bad news is, what’s going to happen next year?
The immediate question at hand is, with Tan retiring as the MCF president for the second time around, who will replace him? I’m sure in the last several weeks there has been a search for the next MCF president. At this stage, I’m not able to say who will be the new MCF president come this Sunday. Like you, I’ll have to wait until next week to find out.
By the way, the national closed and the national women’s closed championships both kick off tomorrow morning. If you are playing, you’ll need to be at the Wilayah Complex in Kuala Lumpur by 8.30am to confirm your registration.
There’ll be two rounds every day except for the final day next Wednesday when there will be only a single round.
The two championships aside, I’d like to reproduce a letter that I received recently from Lim Yee Weng, winner of this year’s Royal Selangor open tournament, who wrote to clarify that he did not miss the sixth round of the event due to work commitment.
Instead, he said, he had to give the game a miss because he was the best man at a wedding.
“I have two very important friends and I felt that to be amongst them was more important. I like chess but I can only be at my friends’ wedding once while I can play in the Royal Selangor open every year,” he wrote.
“Anyway, I didn’t harbour any hope of winning this tournament as I had not won it in the last 10 years. I could have lost in the first round too by default (due to work pressure). I arrived 1½ hours late for the game but was saved by the fact that Round One was delayed due to some unusual circumstances,” Lim added.
While admitting he could have been an accidental winner, he said he owed a lot to second-placed Lim Chuin Hoong and 10th-placed Marcus Yeoh for informing the tournament arbiter that he would be missing the seventh round.
“I had mistakenly informed the arbiter that I would be missing Round Seven instead of Round Six. That could have been another loss by default if not for their kind assistance,” he said.
Anyway, all’s well that ended well for him. Without looking back further, he went on to win his second Royal Selangor open.