I’VE got a feeling that we may see a youngster as national chess champion this year. Some of you will say that we have had young national champions before, and you are not wrong.
( Former national chess champion Edward Lee.)In the last three national championships alone, the titles went to youngsters like Evan Capel (2009), Edward Lee (2008) and Zarul Shazwan (2007). Indeed, the list of national champions is peppered with names of other players who were still in their teens when they won their titles.
I’ve this feeling that the trend will continue. I may be wrong but when I look at the list of participants in this year’s national championship, I believe the future of Malaysian chess rests with the likes of Edward Lee, Sumant Subramaniam, Lim Zhuo Ren and Yeoh Li Tian.
In the women’s national championship, Alia Anin Bakri is the current torch-bearer among the youngsters but two names to look out for are Fong Mi Yen and Tan Li Ting.
Interestingly, this year’s line-up looks remarkably strong and there is a rather long list of players. Maybe it’s because the prize money has been increased.
I still remember how the national champions were rewarded with a RM300 first prize that came from toiling for five or six days at the chess board.
This year though, the first prize is a more reasonable RM1,000 for the open championship and RM600 for the women’s championship, and these have attracted more players.
Never mind that the national championships are being held at the more remote Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia campus in Bangi, the numbers are there and this should make the Malaysian Chess Federation (MCF) a happier organisation.
Now, the next big task for the federation is to convince more of the top players to take part. For this year, there are many experienced names to count on: players like Loo Swee Leong, Tan Khai Boon, Kamal Ariffin Wahiduddin, Kamaluddin Yusof, Nik Ahmad Farouqi, Ismail Ahmad and Lim Kian Hwa. On their good days they are quite capable of upsetting the form books.
We shall see how they prevail in this year’s tournament. Today is already the third day of the event; four rounds have been played since Wednesday, and there are five more to go.
All are critical rounds because as the championship progresses, the tension takes a toll on the players. And tension strikes hardest during a national championship than in any other tournament.
I’ve seen players almost collapsing from exhaustion towards the end of a national championship.
Once, I noticed a player close his eyes to catch forty winks in between moves and he kept nodding off thereafter until the time limit.
Many times, I’ve seen winning games ending up lost because the players could no longer think straight. Their thoughts got muddled up or they became too tired to think. What matters is how well they can pace themselves and at the same time out-pace their rivals.