This year’s national closed championship will be held during the coming school semester break.
THE Malaysian Chess Federation (MCF) has announced that this year’s national closed chess championship will be held during the coming mid-year school semester break. It’s an announcement that’s very late in coming.
The championship starts on May 30 and will continue until June 3, with the closing date for entries is just a week away, on May 28.
It will be a nine-round event and each game will be played using the 90-minute time control with 30 seconds added on for each move. This allows the event to be rated by the World Chess Federation. So there you have it: long time control games with a chance to gain – or lose – Fide ratings.
There’ll actually be two events running concurrently.
The first is the national closed championship for the Tun Hussein Onn trophy. The other is the national women’s closed championship for the Tan Sri Sabbaruddin Chik trophy that’s exclusively for women participants.
Presence needed: Past winners like last year’s national closed champion Edward Lee are urged to play in this year’s tournament.
In order to be able to play in either of these events, a player will either have to represent a state chess association that’s affiliated to the MCF or pay an entry fee to the MCF.
The entry fees are three-tiered for the national closed (open event): RM50 for players with Fide ratings of 2000 or higher, RM100 for players below 2000 and RM150 for unrated players. For the national women’s closed, the entry fees are two-tiered: just RM50 for Fide-rated players and RM150 for unrated ones.
However, all Fide-titled players and former winners of the national closed are entitled to enter the champsionship for free. Personally, I’m not very confident that we’ll see more than a handful take up this offer but it is my hope that some will.
In particular, I have always hoped that the two winners of the previous year’s national closed championships would come back to defend their titles. It is important for them to do so. They’ve gone through the system, won their respective events, been recognised as national master and national woman master, and given the chance to represent the country in overseas events.
It would be the least they could do to give back something to the MCF with their presence.
Let’s hope that we’ll see both Edward Lee and Alia Anin Azwa Bakri in the field on May 30.
By the way, the prize money looks far more decent this year. For both events, the champion will get RM500. Then, there is a runners-up prize of RM400, followed by a third prize of RM300, a fourth prize of RM200 and a fifth prize of RM100.
The venue is the Dato Arthur Tan Chess Centre at the Wilayah Complex along Jalan Munshi Abdullah in Kuala Lumpur.