The malign of Malaysian chess.

Ref: Here.

I have been asked this question so many times before that I have lost count. Why is Malaysian chess in such decline? As if it is somehow that our chess is different from what is happening all around us. As if it is only our chess that is in decline and everything else is rosy. I don't think so. I think our Nation has lost much ground in terms of competitiveness all round. I think we tend to look for the shortcuts and not prepared to put in what it takes to compete in a globalised world.

And the evidence is everywhere. But still a few people with vested interest continue to resist change by trying to distort the true picture. I have argued right from the very beginning that in chess we have a subculture where we have a better understanding than most in our society that healthy competition is the way to develop ourselves. It promotes experimentation to find new ideas in order to develop further.

I read a study sometime back about why the chinese from China were so selfish and seemingly void of any values. The study postulated that the reason was because they perceive that there are no rules from the State that protects them. So it's a dog eat dog world. And that is why they behave as they do. Maybe we can take a page from that study.

I postulate that why we have such ingrained funny "going ons" in Malaysian chess is that there are no proper rules to protect the players who really want to learn competitive chess. The "rules" seem inclined to protect those that have access to the back doors. We may even have an industry or developing one that facilitate back door entries. Do you think there is any truth there?

My opinion developed from observing for many years in our chess arena is that we have many strong players without high ratings for many interesting reasons. And so I have suggested that we do an experiment. Stop giving easy passage for those players who have gone for ratings in their various ways and make them compete. After all when they represent our Country what would we want? Would our goal be that they come back with higher rating or would we want them to fight for our Country with pride and dignity. Which would you prefer? Which do you think is better? What happens in a team event when all our players fight to protect rating? Are you seeing the picture?

Read this again. Here.

We can use what we can learn from chess to contribute back to our Nation. So let us not follow the general malaise but instead be an example for our Country to make a fight back to reasoning and progress.