An inspirational man.

I generally dislike politics. But occasionally I find a politician that is inspiring. I think Nik Aziz is such a man. If only there were more like him. To be a better man.

Here.

Who does Haslinda represent at Asean?

Ref: Here.

MCF is the representative of the Malaysian Chess Community. And so they are mandated by all of us to act on our behalf. MCF is then invited to represent Malaysia at regional levels and above. So Haslinda's post is a post to represent the Country. Or is it?

From my feedback there is no meeting in MCF to authorise the acceptance of this post. So where is her mandate? The big question now is whether she is representing Malaysia or an individual.

Note: The Secretary's job is just to call for meetings to get the mandate. He cannot rule by not calling for a meeting. He cannot rule by keeping important information from the committee. If that happens then our representative has no mandate to represent us.

Is the Malaysian Mens Olympiad Team a fraud?

What were your thoughts when you saw the players list for the Olympiad? 

Here are some views. From Jimmy's blog. Here. From Ilham's blog. Here.

Here are my views.


NC 2012 was advertised as the selection for the Olympiad. 

Now this is important. And so the players took their leave, trained and got the money together to pay for the tournament fees and other expenses. And then they fought hard to be selected.

But no selection criteria was announced. First indication that maybe not all is right and above board. And then the winners were announced. But it took a long time before the players list was posted. Again another indication that something was up. What was so difficult about the selecting the players?

Now lets go back to the list again. The only player from NC2012 that made it on the team is Li Tian. And he was number 4. The procedure for any selection is that if the Champion declines, the place goes to the runner up and so forth. So this begs the question, was Eng Chiam offered a place? And if he declined, was Syazwan offered a place?

The answer to this question alone may show that NC2012 was misrepresented and could very well constitute fraud against the Malaysian chess community. 

It also raises the speculation that the players were determined not by a fair selection but by side deals. It looks like the squad for the mens team were already predetermined. Look back to the last SEA games selection. There were many clues there as to what is really up.

My next post. Conspiracy theory 2. Here I will try to join the dots and tell you what I think really transpired.

The Olympiad Team.

Here.

The announcement is finally out. I think this is going to create a shit storm. Well done Jimmy. I am glad to see you well rewarded for all your hard work. Just hope you will do as well in the Olympiad. Let's see.

Selection zugzwang

I was in a discussion recently where I tried to explain why the puppet master in MCF has truly painted himself into a corner this time and why this Olympiad could be a seriously disastrous outing. Zugzwang.

Selection is a highly charged affair. Most people train hard and come to compete for a place. Other people try to come in through the back door because they feel their player won't make it in a straight fight. Still others want a place for other services rendered to the puppet master. And some want a place because their association hasn't done a good job but has a vote at AGM as a bargaining chip to make them look good. A number think they deserve a place because of a title earned in another era. So it's a very complicated affair.

So that was why FGM pushed for proper selection criteria for SEA games 2011.

From my experience in trying to put in criteria in PICA in 2009, I realised how difficult it can be. The other committee members resist as that is their power card to "respect" instead of doing good work. The parents want their short cuts. Some resist because they feel that the selection criteria must be "perfect" according to their imagined problems before we can put something out.

And I felt the best way was to just put something out and then do a good postmortem and improve on it year by year based on the real problems we face from practice in real situations.

Therefore I realised that selection will be a major issue for the Olympiad. It will always be an issue if selection is made a political tool for control and for votes.

Why? Because that does not find us the best players. So it is very short sighted.

So lets look again at the Olympiad fiasco. I wrote on my blog before the event that we can either use the SEA games criteria if no proper postmortem was done or we can try to find some improvement to the process just using our reasoning. And I made some suggestions. Limit the rating for the selection proper and use a challenger cup for the rest. But this all fell on deaf ears.

So now we have this situation. No matter what the puppet master does now, he is going to piss someone off. If he goes back to my suggestion it will show he cannot think. That would have been the simplest and most straight forward way. Much simpler then the situation now. Now there are just too many deals. The puppet master has to weigh which deal will help him survive the AGM. And there are no good options. He has already pissed off too many people.

And so he cannot decide. Zugzwang.

And the players and our Country's standing in the world chess community will suffer as a result. I don't think there is anything he can do now to reverse that huge blunder. Chess. Think before you move.

I tried to warn you my friend. Keep your politics out of chess. Keep selection clean. Rely on your good work for re-election instead. By my count, you won't make it. But lets see.

The writing on the wall.

Ref: Here.

This is a good piece even if Jimmy only translated it from the original author. It's also called paradoxical thinking. I have covered aspects of this before. And I have said that it holds higher truths than thinking in terms of contradictions.......For day must surely follow the night.


So maybe Jimmy is finally seeing the writing on the wall. He is consistently losing supporters because of what he has been doing. In Malaysian chess today, it is very hard to earn your place on the Malaysian team from just doing propaganda work for the puppet master. So all that effort in putting up of new anonymous blogs and comments may not pay back. The biggest swing in sentiment happened after the Olympiad selection fiasco. Now many peoples eyes are opened about how things really are.

I hope this article also means that he is finally opening his own eyes too; that he will not go to the Olympiads if offered a place. If he does go then I think he won't recover from the damage to what's left of his reputation.

The writing on the wall is that we want fighters to represent our Country. No more back doors earned by unsavoury means.

Ref: Here. 

Here we see Peter endorsing the excellent objectives of the Kasugi Team Tournament. That is good for the person who abuses parents and players alike. The same person who tries to set our National policies and tries to justify banning of players without basis.

Perhaps he is getting rejected by the National Junior players he has been offering training to recently. Perhaps he is getting responses from his previously staunch sponsors that this behaviour is not acceptable. Perhaps he too has seen the writing on the wall.

The writing on the wall is that the parents and players are deserving of respect. We pay your bills.

My suggestion. Stop wasting your time by trying for the back doors. That is not the way. Spend the time you have wasted in this to improving your chess.

Stop trying to rationalise away the damage to your reputation caused by your own actions. You are not believed. Do good tournaments and nurture your players instead. That is the better way. The days where people will take your God complexes are over.

This is what I think the puppet master himself will soon discover on the wall. My 2 cents.

Cycle of abuse by Marina Mahathir.

Here.

I wrote about how to unmake the bully in you. Here.  Marina's article shows how bullies are created in the first place. So I hope you will reflect on the 2 articles and then look again at our own chess environment. We have extremely talented kids and they will enter the mainstream of Malaysian society at some point in positions of influence. Whether they will become part of the solution of bringing Malaysia forward or become part of the problem that we are now seeing will depend very much on whether we nurture them or we abuse them.

Note: We cannot protect them all their lives but we need to ensure that they are equipped to handle themselves; learn how to solve problems and how to get real results when they are still young. The way we are doing things now breaks them before they are ready and creates the next generation of bullies.

This is not about putting anyone down. All we are asking for is responsibility by the governing bodies of chess to putting in proper guidelines and rules.

The conspiracy theorists.

There are many of them who cannot see what MCF is doing for the good of the Country and Malaysian chess. They cannot see the sacrifice of our officials. The cynics among them are now saying that our move to the Asean level is only because the Asean event is a cash cow.

They say the players have to stay at official residences where the rates are much higher than comparable places etc. (An official once estimated the income from one Asean event. The income could even be higher than the Asian Amateur and Melaka combined if he is correct. And better still since the money is earned overseas. Here people are asking about bank accounts, thinking of lodging MACC reports etc.)

The conspiracy theorists are also saying that we are wiping out our experienced Juniors who can take us to the next level. We only promote age group events and do only token participation in Junior events. See here for example. This is what they say we do not do.They keep saying that the promotion of age group events is only to fill beginner training classes where money is made. They say that the fact our IM's do not need to fight for their own space to represent the Country is a conspiracy to keep Malaysia backward. Knock out the older juniors who can challenge for a place, promote a new young boy and our IM's will still look good against the new youngster. Paint a rosy picture. (Win/win. For the trainers and for the colluding IM's).

Then when the boy gets older, just knock that boy out also and promote a new boy. What a crazy conspiracy theory?

They say the simple process to ensure this is to give the entire chess community one place; don't promote the selection by giving proper criteria; change the dates unexpectedly so more won't turn up and then reserve 4 places for MCF to manipulate just in case. Then we can keep things the way they are.

Why can't you people see that our older juniors are all washed out by 15? Sending them out time and time again in the age group events without proper training will have already set up the conditions for them to implode eventually. Ticking time bombs. Besides they need to wait their turn until our current IM's retire. Isn't that the respectful Malaysian way? 

Now why can't you see that our public attacks on them, attacks on their parents, ban them, are for all their own good? Why are you so blind?

So let us show you what we can do on the International circuit. Give us a chance to show that our Malaysian representative in Asean will make a difference for Malaysian chess. This is prudent use of your resources. This is the democratic process for finding good decisions by your elected representatives.

Let us prove that our Olympiad performance will improve in stages. All we ask from you is another 30 years or till we retire. Is that too much to ask after all our sacrifice for you? Remember, we are the technical experts. They haven't got a clue about what they are talking about. Leave it to us.

Your future and your childrens future are all in good hands. We have had many years of experience to set up the perfect system. So don't rock the boat.

Haslinda is Secretary General of Asean Confederation.

Congratulations Haslinda for being nominated for the post by the committee of the Malaysian Chess Federation (MCF) on behalf of the Malaysian chess community at Asean level. Ref: Here.

This is a fantastic opportunity for our new Malaysian ambassador to take us up the levels in Asean. All our best. Do us proud.

Some comparative questions we should be asking.

Here. The table of medals is right at the bottom.

We see Vietnam with 70plus golds, Singapore with 7. And then we have Malaysia...

As I have said many times, healthy competition is about raising our own standards and not about putting the other down. Remember this is primarily an age group event where we used to do quite well. So our neighbours must be doing something right and better than us. And so aren't they deserving of those results from finding the correct solutions to raising their game.

Some questions we could ask is that as far as organisational structure and support services goes, Singapore is ahead. I understand that in Vietnam their structure is more decentralised. Vietnam is also Johnny come lately. And yet they have pulled ahead of even Singapore.

Don't you think these are some of the things we should be looking at?

But what are we doing instead? We have conversations like this. Ref: Here. This type of conversations is actively encouraged. There is nothing wrong it seems by the people who holds the reigns and guide Malaysian chess. In fact it seems, the more you talk like that the better the reward.

Is that denial, escapism or something else? Or all of it?

And so I wonder what our senior team will produce at the Olympiad. What do you think the results will show?

When do you think we can ask questions about our weaknesses? When you go to school and your teacher writes in your report card that you are talented but you lack discipline, is that a personal attack? Or is it because you have an issue to address before you can move forward? Which is it? Is closing your ears any good for you?

I think we need to first acknowledge that we have a problem. For only after that can we talk about what the possible solutions can be. Don't blame anyone. Look at what we haven't done. Look at what we should be doing. Lets take a hard look at ourselves. Where has MCF been taking us all these years? Don't we have a lot more talent and resources than many Countries with GM's?


Remember, once we were teaching China how to play chess.


Note: Some may argue about the size of contingent. If you are one of those let me use the example of NAG in Perak recently. Perak had the largest contingent by far. But very few players of calibre and so very few medals. It may even be possible that China and Iran sent one player and got one gold each. Not too sure but I am told we sent 21 players. So it is not size but quality of contingent. Quality of training etc. You think?

Do you still think the Malaysian chess solution will work in the International arena? Can we ban Vietnam? Maybe set up new blogs to do some more character assasination. Lets see in the Olympiad if this method works. Then we can market this solution world wide.