22-12-2005 chess

From Malaysia Encyclopedia

Loeffler’s inspirational play

CHESS by QUAH SENG SUN

THE next time you take part in a chess tournament, especially one that is held over several days, spare a kind thought for the arbiters and helpers. While players are hard at work at the chessboards, it is the arbiters and the helpers who are on their feet most of the time for the duration of the event.

I am speaking from experience following the recently concluded Wah Seong Hwang-DBS Penang international open chess championship which was held over five consecutive days and which called for the arbiters and helpers to be involved for more than 12 hours at a stretch each day.

But what my fellow arbiters – Ung Tay Aik and Ching Kim Lye – and I endured during the five days is nothing compared to the Herculean efforts that the organisers in KL put in at big events such as the Arthur Tan or Merdeka events. Those are on a much bigger scale.

Nevertheless, the tournament in Penang was a good learning and re-learning experience for all. It has been a long while since an international-level chess event was held in the state.

In a chess tournament such as this, where grandmasters and international masters get invited for free, with accommodation thrown in, the risk is quite high that there could be players who will not turn up.

In the end, we had an impressive list of titled players who confirmed coming but did not. We were lucky that three grandmasters, one international master and one Fide master, heeded our call.

Together with 15 other Fide-rated players and numerous non-titled players from Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines among the 110-odd players, the event was a great organisational success for the Penang Chess Association.

For the record, if you have not visited the tournament website at pca.bayanbaru.com/PgOpen the winner of the tournament was not any of the invited grandmasters but the German international master, Stefan Loeffler.

His inspirational play included wins over grandmasters Drazen Sermek of Slovenia and Tejas Bakre of India. Loeffler’s string of wins was only stopped in the ninth round when our own Fide master, Mok Tze Meng, put up a spirited fight to split the point.

Quah Seng Sun can be contacted at ssquah@gmail.com. Join Malaysia’s biggest chess mailing list by registering yourself at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chess-malaysia