New edition of Malaysian chess fest

Chess players will be spoilt for choice come August and September.

MANY chess players will be heaving a sigh of relief when they read this, and I mean a really big sigh. I know, because that was what I did upon learning last week that there will be a new edition of the Malaysian Chess Festival this year.

Yes, the country’s premier chess festival will continue for at least one more year. And what it means in practical terms for chess aficionados in this region is that the frenzy of almost non-stop chess activities this year will stretch from Aug 17 to Sept 10, save for a short holiday respite as the country celebrates National Day and Aidil Fitri.

At the conclusion of last year’s Festival, there were real fears that we could have seen the last of the event in its present format.

Datuk Tan Chin Nam, doyen of the Malaysian chess scene, had been hinting rather loudly throughout last year’s festival that he was going to take a sabbatical from sponsoring future major chess tournaments in the country.

He said his continued presence was casting a long shadow on the development of Malaysian chess. As long as he was putting up the money to sponsor chess events here, he feared that other sponsors would be reluctant to step into the picture.

Sponsors needed

Malaysian chess, he told me, could not depend on his largesse forever. We need other sponsors to rejuvenate the game. If he were to move out of the picture, he believed new sponsors could be found.

True enough, when 2011 came around, chess organisers found that Tan had stuck to his promise not to fork out more money for chess. The hardest hit was, of course, the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre at the Wilayah Complex in Kuala Lumpur, the chess centre that bore his late son’s very name. It is to this chess centre’s credit that it has managed to reinvent itself and survive.

Nevertheless, there would remain a big question mark over the future of the Malaysian Chess Festival, of which the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open tournament was the flagship event. It was the event that attracted foreign chess masters to Kuala Lumpur; it was the event that was synonymous with the reputation of the Malaysian Chess Festival.

But in the event that there really were little funds to run a full-scale Malaysian Chess Festival, what would happen?

The worst case scenario was that the Malaysian open and other supporting events could be scrapped and the organisers would revert to organising only the Merdeka chess events. If that were to happen, it would be a letdown for Malaysian chess and a huge blow to the foreign and local chess players who support the Festival every year.

Therefore, scrapping the Malaysian open was not going to be a popular option. By hook or by crook, the Festival would have to go on and the organisers knew that.

And finally, after many months of suspense and hard work to convince sponsors to continue backing the Festival, the Year 2011 Edition is announced.

So what can we expect this year? First of all, I am looking forward to the eighth edition of the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open. As it still retains the name of Datuk Arthur Tan in the title, I can only presume that there is continuing sponsorship from IGB Corporation Bhd.

Then there are also the Malaysia Chess Challenge and the second Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng seniors open tournament which is sponsored by Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd.

Apart from these three Fide-rated main events which will be played from Aug 17-25, there are four other tournaments that are now considered part and parcel of the Malaysian Chess Festival: the Swensen age group rapid chess open tournament (to be held on Aug 21); the Malaysian Chess Festival blitz open tournament (Aug 25); the Merdeka individual rapid open (Aug 26); and the 31st Astro Merdeka rapid chess team open championship (Aug 28-29).

All these events will be played at the ballroom of the Cititel Mid Valley Hotel.

I mentioned earlier that the chess activities will stretch until Sept 10. This is because we mustn’t forget the fourth Kuala Lumpur open tournament. This event, now officially known as the Raja Nazrin Shah Masters & International Open Chess Championship, will kick off on Sept 4 at the Swiss Garden Hotel and Residences in Kuala Lumpur.

This championship is under the purview of the Kuala Lumpur Chess Association and technically distinct from the Malaysian Chess Festival. There are two separate tournaments here. The first is a Masters event which is a 10-player round robin invitational grandmaster tournament that provides the invited hopefuls with the chance of attaining a grandmaster title norm. And the second is an open tournament that is something very similar to the Malaysia open tournament, that is, with title norm aspirations for the participants, too.

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