Friday, February 19, 2010

Sign of life from PICA

Just got a note from Hamid that PICA is doing a grand prix for Perak. Congratulations to PICA. This is a welcome addition to the effort to bring Perak back to the National arena. But there are a few questions I would like to address here.

1. Have the PICA rating been finally abolished? It says on the form MCF/FIDE rating. The PICA rating has been used controversially in the past and created confused pairings. This happened in last years Clearwater event for instance.

2. Will cross tables of the events be published? The lack of cross tables has lead to questions of the legitimacy of the current Perak Champion as another example.

3. PICA has stated that they reserve the right to reject entries. Will conditions for rejection be based on personal issues as for instance, in the case of Ainaa (official's daughter had a problem with Ainaa in school), which was brought up in the last AGM or will it be based on objective reasons?

I ask this questions for the dignity of Perakians. Now that you have a good sponsor again PICA, I hope you will not mire the State of Perak in these controversies again.

But I hold up some hope as this is jointly organised by Datcc, an organisation that has to date been professionally run. If the 3 questions I asked are satisfactorily answered then this is a true blessing to Perak. Welcome PICA back to the chess fraternity.

So I move in faith and post up the entry forms here. I hope I wont regret this decision. Click here for particulars

2 comments:

  1. Very good comments Raymond, PICA should learn something from last year Clearwater incidences,
    ensure the right person to handle the right job. Rating issues is very much important, as well as crosstable, MUST BE PUBLISHED.
    Thanks Raymond.

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  2. I hope they learn too. My view is that without these devices to mask results they will have to face up to the fact that there is no Perak player that was developed in Perak that is even close to National level. My belief is that if they undertake the work of developing strong players then they will understand and respect the work it takes and they wont be so cavalier about running suspect tournaments. And they will understand that it an honour to them that strong players grace their tournaments and not the other way round. They also need to understand that they must keep a good name or they will also discredit their sponsors and Perak. If they dont change there may come a time when strong players will boycott Perak events and that will be a sad loss to the State.

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