Malaysia/Singapore match review

I love the questions raised by Najib here. In our meetings to launch our First GM Chess Academy, we have discussed the need for healthy competition to generate the hard questions. In a discussion with Greg Lau, I argued that it is healthy for us to have many chess academies.

Say if the players from First Gm were to meet players from another academy and our players lost badly, the first thing I would do is call a meeting with our Consultant IM Lim Yee Weng and the rest of our trainers and ask, what happened? Where are we deficient, what else can we do so next time our players will do better? I will scour our syllabus, our methods and processes to make sure we become better.

My argument with Greg is that the Associations have let us down. With all the in-fighting and politicking, they have managed to keep us going backwards for many many years. So I see the role of MCF as the arbiter. Let the academies fight it out. They are lean "fighting machines", specialising only in coming out with better players. In the process a GM will be born. I reiterate, the struggle is for better ideas. Healthy competition is not about back stabbing or personalities. It's "chess players" meeting as gentlemen and coming up with better ideas through competition. Only the board is our system of training, coaching. If we understand this, I am sure the GM is just around the corner. For the GM is the result of this chess match.

On the other hand, in my opinion, some Associations are about ego, protecting positions and nothing about results. There I've said it. Caveat: Most of my experience comes from the Perak Chess Association so in that I am limited. I know that there are a few Associations that are doing well but I have no knowledge of their inner workings.

Of course I hope our Associations will wake up and do something useful. I hear some stories that PICA is trying to do just that. I wish them luck but all the same I will continue to report the inner goings-on. They make facinating reading and I hope it will be educational. It's coming out soon once I have cleared my current workload.

But for now, I hope more questions are asked. And more solutions coming. This is good for Malaysian chess.