Spirit of togetherness

The recent Merdeka tournament saw tremendous fighting spirit and the participation of a great number of foreign players.

THE recent Merdeka rapid chess team tournament was a great success. The organisers had targeted 50 teams for the competition but the number of entries surpassed their expectations.

A total of 66 teams with more than 300 participants took part in the three-day, eight-round event at the Cititel Midvalley Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.

  f_p21sebastian.jpgVictorious: Sebastian Simanjuntak holding aloft the Merdeka team trophy on behalf of his teammates. Looking on are Datuk Tan Chin Nam (in blue batik shirt) and MCF president Tan Sri Ramli Ngah Talib.

Why do I say that this was perhaps one of the more interesting editions of the Merdeka rapid chess tournaments in recent years?

It was because of the great fighting spirit and the variety of foreign players this year. I saw representations from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, China, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Germany, Iran and Singapore.

And finally, it was also the spirit of togetherness that saw players of different nationalities playing together in the same team. Gens Una Sumus – that’s the motto of the World Chess Federation. It means “We are one family” and nowhere was this clearer than at the Merdeka rapid chess team event.

Team Astro comprised two Uzbek grandmasters and two Malaysians, while the Klang Valley Kiwis team consisted of New Zealanders, an Australian and a Malaysian.

Then of course, what is the Merdeka event if we don’t have Malaysians and Singaporeans playing together in the same team? This year, the most prominent among them was the team called Friends of Jenjosh.

The Merdeka chess tournament is not only about friendship and getting together for a few chess games. It is about competing and the competition gets tougher every year.

In the last few years, the Filipinos were the masters of the Merdeka competitions. Invariably, they would come up with teams that dominated the events, and won them with relative ease.

They had an immense wealth of talent. Even their unrated and untitled players were good enough to send their teams to the winners’ podium.

However, unknown talents would eventually become known. Unrated players would eventually earn their ratings and chess titles. So I suspect that it has become harder for them to field teams like before.

This year, the best that a Filipino team could do was to finish fourth. Tagatay City were powered by two grandmasters – Rogelio Antonio and Darwin Laylo – but their two other players could not deliver enough points to help the team.

So this year could be the start of a shift in chess domination from the Filipinos to the Indonesians.

Yes, two Indonesian teams finished one-two in the Merdeka event. A third team from Indonesia finished in fifth place. The winner of the tournament was RTCC Indonesia, comprising international master Tirto, Fide master Wahono Awam, unrated Jafar Sofyan and veteran Hasian Panggabian. Panggabian gave a solid performance as the fourth board player by scoring eight points from nine games but Jafar turned in an even more sterling performance with 8½ points. That was as close as anyone could get towards a 100% score.

Second place winner was the Bhayangkara Police Indonesia team with Indonesian grandmaster Susanto Megaranto as their top board and Irwanto Sadikin as their third board player. Others in the team were Sutarji, Farid Firmansyah and Eco Pujianto.

But Indonesians and Filipinos aside, my personal vote for the best team in the Merdeka tournament goes to SMS Gold, our own “Made In Malaysia” local team. SMS Gold – with Fide master Lim Yee Weng, Marcus Chan, Fide master Nicholas Chan, Khor Shihong and Nanda Kumar – clinched third place in the overall standings.

Nicholas was one of two other participants to score 8½ points from nine games. The other one was Uzbek grandmaster Saidali Yuldachev of sixth-placed Team Astro.

All in all, apart from the top two winners, the team scores were quite close. RTCC Indonesia scored 28½ points, Bhayangkara Police scored 27½ points, SMS Gold and Tagatay City scored 24 points, Jakarta Chess Club and Team Astro scored 23½ points, IRI-MAS had 22½ points, and both Calamba City “A” and Calamba City “B” obtained 22 points. Selangor was the best state team with 21 points, followed by Sarawak with 20½ points.

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