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Chess Crazy 
By Andrew Ooi

The Deadly Chess Cycle

I know I don’t have to blog about this as many people already know the cycle where we lose all our promising chess talents. Or at least ALL who will not see their chess talents reach even half of their full potential.

Still, I just want to share my own perception of this. With more junior chess activities we are finding more hidden talents like Yeoh Li Tian. The problem will be that Malaysia does not have the ideal chess talent development program compared to other countries.

Isn’t it sad that we have fantastic talents like Mas, Anas, Siti, Yee Weng and so many more promising juniors but they never get to reach their full potential. I’m not saying that they are spent and wasted but you can’t deny that these juniors could have attained much higher chess success if only they were in some other better developed chess country.

How many times have you heard this from a strong local chess player :-

This speaks volume about how backward our chess development is - relative to other countries.

Talent drain
We lose out a big number of our young chess talents at the age of 15-20 to studies. Many will still harbour the dream of making it big in chess but after studies most of them have already given up higher ambitions and are satisfied with the weekly chess tournament or meeting up old friends during Merdeka Team championship.

Of course there is life’s normal course where after completion of their studies, the job takes it’s toll not to mention getting married and having children. It’s no surprise Malaysia has not advanced far compared to our neighbouring countries.

Then there are those that after all these, are still active but because of lack of funds and direction, have not developed their talents any further. These players continue as strong veteran players and their quests for higher titles like FM or IM is clearly over.

Surely other chess giants like Philippines, China and Vietnam als face the talent dilution problem. How come they have GMs while we are still struggling to produce our first?

Solutions
I do not even pretend to know any solution to the above problem but here is what I think:-

Money
We need to remove money from the equation. Fear of chess depriving the young of a healthy living is quite common. How can you sacrifice your career for chess ? What are you going to live on ? Chess Professional ? Is there even such a thing ? We have got to show that becoming a chess professional is one that is respectable and comfortable. Lofty dreams eh? Getting our first Malaysian GM is not enough. If he or she lives the life of a pauper and has to struggle nobody would want to become a GM. One avenue may be coaching. It’s starting to grow in this country and perhaps with enough students, professional chess players can earn good money from this career. I think modern methods in teaching is needed to give parents more confidence in coaches. As it is right now, I see parents coach-hopping to find the best coach for their children.

Sponsor
Look at India. None of their chess professionals can survive without sponsorship. Most chess masters there hold full time jobs but the company they work for are their sponsors and allow them leave any time to take part in important chess events. Their plane ticket and everything is paid for. Even World champion Viswanathan Anand is sponsored by NIIT.

Copy Successful Training Program
China has successfully copied Russia’s School of chess and look where it has gotten them. In a short span of time (relatively speaking) they have become a chess powerhouse. Their players are one of the strongest in the world and this achievement is fantastic in my opinion. Can their success be copied?

Malaysian Scholastic
At this moment, we should not be satisfied with the fast development particularly scholastic chess in Malaysia. We have to remember that other countries are also seeing a boom in this area and are developing even faster. How many times have we seen our juniors get top 10 placing in world events only to have their progress reach a plateau after a short rise.