Intrusion of greed and politics into Malaysian chess.

Have you ever wondered why our chess keeps going downhill? Lets examine this a little more today.

My first clue was when I trained over 20 arbiters during my time in PICA in 2009. Directly after that I realised that none of them were being used. Perak is a big State and 20 fresh arbiters would have done a lot to help it's progress. But what I saw was that the President of PICA himself became an arbiter. Why?

My suspicion is that it is too dangerous to allow certain tournaments to be in the hands of arbiters not in their control. A fair tournament may result.

Later on I hear some people telling me that they have met the conditions to be certified as National Arbiters but MCF has not endorced them. I hear that they are not given the opportunity to arbiter in International Tournaments. It is a closed shop it seems. Why would that be? Where is the sense of that?

Perhaps this fantasy story may throw some light. Ref: Here.

Now lets think about why we keep sending out our kids unprepared to International Tournaments only to be thrashed. Ref: Here. They keep losing and they don't know why. And so their morale keeps getting hammered. They have no answers and we provide them with none.

Do you need to be a genius to know that it is untenable to keep sending out our players unprepared and untrained? We had an opportunity to raise our game when GM Ziaur Rahman came in 2010. But what did MCF use him for? To teach U8 players. Why?

Why did they allow Jimmy and Peter to promote Li Tian when his game was weak? To the point that he was sent out to play for the Country even when he could not win by selection locally. Ref: Here.

How can we rely on the opinion of someone who almost came dead last at Asian Continental this year? How can we rely on the opinion of someone who has not played a Fide tournament in over a decade? How can we rely on someone who has never brought up a strong player himself? He merely borrow others work and those that he does teach even for a short time become very fearful players and subsequently crash.

Is the answer not greed? They want to create the illusion that they know chess even when the evidence points otherwise. They want students without actually learning how to coach or train properly.

They want our players out there unprepared and untrained because they make money or get free holidays from those tournaments. They want control of the tournaments because they want to make sure that only their players qualify and then be allowed to play overseas representing our Country under sponsorship while we pay for our own children from our own pockets. Even if their players are not as good.

And so greed and politics have entered chess has it not?

We all need a space where we can be free of those influences. For it is only within that space can our children learn this. Here. For chess is meant to teach you those things. Simply put, the moment we are free of those influences, Malaysian chess will soar. We have the resources and the talent. But we will not be able to progress under those influences. Ref: Here.