EARLIER this month, I made an unplanned private day trip to Kuala Lumpur. One aspect of most of my unplanned trips is that one way or another, I find myself visiting the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre (DATCC) at the Wilayah Complex along Jalan Dang Wangi.
The place is such a magnet for me. It’s so conveniently located in KL that just about any chess player can visit it with ease. I was mildly surprised when I got there. The place had expanded. Occupying about twice the original floor space, the chess centre is now big enough to cater comfortably to any tournament with up to 120 players.
As luck would have it, the Selangor open chess tournament was going on that day when I visited the chess centre.
Good timing, I noted to myself, here was a perfect opportunity to see how the country’s longest-running chess tournament was being organised. This tournament has been running without any interruption since 1974, the year the Chess Association of Selangor (CAS) was formed.
That’s an unbroken stretch of 37 years. It’s a local achievement and I think this is mentioned in the Malaysia Book of Records, too. I remember having played in the first two editions of the tournament back in 1974 at the Royal Selangor Club, and in 1975 at a school in Jalan Gasing, Petaling Jaya. That school was used by the CAS for several years.
Today, the organisers are using the DATCC in Kuala Lumpur. I gathered from the playing list that there were 71 participants at this year’s event.
This was a reasonably big enough number for an event of this stature but I felt the organisers would have wanted to see more people taking part in their premier chess event.
Another thing that struck me about this tournament was that for the second year running, the Selangor open has been organised without any sponsorship deal. The prize moneys and the money for our expenses are being met mainly from the entry fees and partly from the association’s internal funds, I was told.
Well, it is a shame that the country’s longest-running chess event hasn’t been able to obtain any sponsor again. The association’s long-term sponsor pulled out last year, citing economic problems. But the tournament had to go on, so the CAS decided to use its internal funds.
This year, the sponsor must have pulled out again and left the association carrying their baby for yet another year.
In my opinion, this can’t be continuing. It was quite understandable if the sponsor had been forced to pull out last year. After all, the global problems triggered by the sub-prime crisis in the United States had left many companies in a difficult situation.
But if the same sponsor had pulled out again for a second year, the CAS should come up with a Plan B and search for alternative sources of sponsorship. They shouldn’t allow this situation to spill into the third year.
Chess associations in Malaysia operate almost exclusively on sponsorship funds. Everyone works purely on a voluntary basis for the good of the game. As much as chess players owe it to the chess associations to uplift the level of chess in the community, chess associations also owe it to the chess players for their support. It’s the only survival technique the associations need, otherwise they become irrelevant.
Dependency on one another makes it a symbiotic relationship. One cannot do without the other. But the only way for chess players to support their associations is for the associations to organise quality events for players. No matter how hard a voluntary organisation may work, it becomes impossible for it to continue working hard for long without external sponsorship funds coming in.
So definitely, a Plan B is in order for the CAS to move forward. I hope they are already doing this because I shall really be sad if Malaysia’s longest-running tournament gets affected again next year and in the years to come.
For the record, Dr Nicholas Chan bounced back from his disappointing display at the Kuala Lumpur Masters event to bag the first prize at the Selangor open tournament. A convincing performance here which saw Chan finish half-a-point ahead of Jimmy Liew and Kamal Ariffin Wahiduddin who ended in joint second place.
However, the most impressive result was scored by 11-year-old Yeoh Li Tian who finished in joint fourth place with Loo Swee Leong, Muhd Syazwan Zulkifli and Tan Ken Wei.