Report from Maverick. Part 1

Read here.

Got to meet many parents and players during Maverick to get feedback on the recent developments in Malaysian Chess. From the players perspective it was almost unanimous that the selection for SEA games gave them new energy to continue the fight to improve. One strong player even told me that he had not played the last 7 National Close but chose to return into the fray this year because of the selection. His friends around him nodded in agreement.

The parents had a vast spectrum of views although all too were supportive of selection. One point brought up was the ugliness of the blog war. So I have this to say. There was not a single voice that was against selection in the vast multitude of players and parents present. So who were those couple of people on the blogs that made it seem that it was such a terrible thing till accusations are flung at me for wanting to destroy chess and them attempting to give an illusion of inflated numbers on the blogs?

So again I clarified that there are 2 types of struggle. There are those that are ego based and those are not worth supporting. And then there are those that are issue based. The issue was selection. And so this was a struggle I felt we had to endure if we want progress, ugly as it was.

And so we now have selection and we see a big influx of players back into the system. Many other issues were raised and discussed yesterday so I will break the story into parts.