No let-up in pace at 12-day chess fest.
FOR the better part of last fortnight, I had been playing in the Malaysia Chess Festival.
At the risk of disclosing my age to the whole world, I want to mention that I was not participating in the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open championship but rather, in the KLK Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng senior open tournament.
These two tournaments, together with the AmBank chess challenge, were the main showcase events of this year’s 12-day festival at the Cititel Mid Valley Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
Full of beans: Iranian children aged 14 and below with the certificates and medals which they won at the Swensen’s rapid age group championship.All these ended yesterday but there is no respite for the organisers.
It is just one tournament after another, and today sees the festival continue with the one-day Astro Merdeka individual rapid open tournament.
Then tomorrow and on Sunday, the festival ends with the traditional Astro Merdeka team rapid open championship.
Earlier this week, I heard from the organisers that more than 80 teams had registered for the team event, and these were only the early entries.
When the late entries are counted, the number of teams may well go above 100, meaning a possibility of more than 500 people taking part in a chess competition!
By comparison, there were only 70 teams last year.
As for the three showcase tournaments – all individual events – there were 98 participants in the Malaysia open championship, 40 players in the chess challenge tournament, and 29 in the senior open tournament.
The numbers may be down from last year but there was still a very respectable list of visiting grandmasters and international masters.
Sandwiched within the nine rounds of the three events was a spectacularly-run Swensen’s rapid age group championship, a one-day event that managed to attract 385 junior players from within and outside the country.
From experience, I can tell you that managing age group chess events can be quite harrowing for organisers.
The prospect of controlling the younger players, especially those 12 and below, can test the nerves of even the coolest organisers.
Can’t remember how it was like to be a 12-year-old or an eight-year-old?
For one day, these children reminded me that we were all young once.
Like us, they were noisy, boisterous, innocent, excitable, exuberant, impatient and impressionable.
I marvelled at the ease they alternated between being serious and playful.
They were full of energy away from the chess boards but displayed great concentration and determination when seated across the board from their opponents.
Among the 385 players was a group of 35 children from Teheran, Iran, none of them older than 14.
Together with their parents and chess coaches, they came on an eight-day holiday but had also arranged with the festival organisers to take part in the Swensen’s event as part of their holiday itinerary.
At the closing ceremony, they even arranged to appear on stage with the sponsors and organisers just to receive their certificates of participation and for some of them, their winner’s medals.
Looking back, I would think that it was very important to the Iranian parents and coaches that this would be an educational trip, and the children had something to show and remind them that they had, after all, come to Malaysia to play chess.