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Chess
4 Life!
By Candidate
Master Collin Madhavan
Where
have all the players gone ....?
There was a very famous song in the sixties titled "Where have all the
flowers gone?" and it actually sums up what parents, officials, coaches and
the chess players themselves, have been asking themselves on the predicament
that we have been facing. You see, we have talented junior players who just
'disappear' from the chess scene or never really achieve that greatness that
they reached so early in their chess playing 'career'.
Many a time, we have been asked why after so many years of competition,
Malaysia still doesn't have a Grandmaster Master or a bigger number of
International Masters? What happened to all our young gifted players? To
date, we only have 3 International Masters to speak of. It is a question that has
plagued the Federation, as well as the parents, and especially, the players
themselves.
Okay, let's look at one particular
player, Fide Master Ooi Chern Ee. This is a classic case of one very
talented JUNIOR chess player. Within a few short years of
coming onto the chess scene, Chern
Ee became one of the strongest juniors in the country. In 1992, he
broke into the international scene when he played at the World Youth
Chess Festival in Germany and he proved that he was one of the
strongest juniors in the world for his age category. In that tournament, he played so well that he ended up in joint fifth
position, sixth after the tie-break. Now let's look at whom he had for
company in the under-14 category. Ahead of him by only half a point
were Tihonov Jurij (now GM),
Benoit Lepelletier (now IM), Tzoumbas Anastasios (now FM) and
Peter Leko (now Super GM)!! And the others who also tied with Chern Ee
include
Vescovi Giovanni (now GM), Dao Thien Hai (now GM), Avrukh Boris (now GM), Baklan Vladimir
(now GM) and Leitao Rafael (now GM)!! Ouch!! I don't know about you,
but I'm feeling some real pain here. Okay, sorry, let's move on.
Ooi in action
(photo courtesy of gilachess).
After that year, Chern Ee played in a number of
tournaments which also included two Chess Olympiads in 1994 and 1996.
And then in 1997, Chern Ee moved to the United States of America
where he went into Actuarial Science. While there, he got to play in
one FIDE rated
tournament (!) and a couple of Inter-College Chess tournaments (!). After
finishing his studies, he returned to Malaysia (good move!), got a
good paying job (good move!) and later got married (very good
move!!)
However, it's been 15 years since the great
1992 tournament in Germany, and Chern Ee is still not a GM or an IM. So what happened?
And you know what, when I spoke to him two days ago, he told me that
he still harbours ambitions of achieving these
titles.
So how can we help him? How can we help other
junior players like him? Do you have some thoughts about this? Do you know
why this happens to chess players in Malaysia? Do we have some form of
incurable Chess disease? Or do YOU have the
'formula' to MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
I have some theories and ideas about all these
questions, which I will discuss next week. But how about you, the
reader? If you like to share some ideas with the rest of us, please drop
me a line at geodat@yahoo.com.
I'll leave you this week with a game that Ooi Chern Ee
played against the then fast improving International Master Votara who, yes you guessed it, is now a GM!!
Ooi Chern Ee - Jan
Votava, Yerevan 1996
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