Young Old Frees

My chess friends and I have just returned from Kuala Lumpur where we had been participating as The Old Frees' Association team, calling ourselves Young Old Frees, at the annual 38th Merdeka team chess tournament which is part of the Malaysia Chess Festival.

The Festival is still going on strong but this year, we are without our chief chess benefactor who passed away last year on the 21st of October. Therefore, this year's edition of the Festival carries the additional description, "A Tribute to Dato' Tan Chin Nam".

The souvenir booklet carries pages upon pages of pictures of Dato' Tan with various chess personalities. I have two contributions to this booklet: the first one is a reproduction of my tribute to him that was carried by The Star newspaper and the second one refers to the variant of the chess game known as Rapid Chess which was mooted by Dato' Tan while he was still a Deputy President of the World Chess Federation in the 1990s.

But coming back to the Merdeka team tournament, there's no inkling at all when the tournament first saw light in Malaysia. As the tournament doesn't carry an edition number, the casual chess player can only guess when it was first started. However, I can state categorically that the first Merdeka team event probably began in 1982. There was dwindling interest in the Malaysian national team championship which was restricted to the states only, and a Merdeka team tournament seemed a logical replacement and progression for the Malaysian Chess Federation. This tournament would open chess for the masses to play.

Thus, the Merdeka team tournament in 2009 should be considered as the 38th edition. As the years progressed, the team competition became increasingly popular. The initial venue, the Wisma Belia in Jalan Lornie (now known as Jalan Syed Putra), gave way to the Putra World Trade Centre, and then the venue shifted to the MVEC on the fourth level of the Midvalley shopping complex before it found its latest home at the Cititel Midvalley.

The Young Old Frees never had any realistic chance of winning any prizes in the tournament. It was not only that there were scores of strong teams that were fronted by foreign grandmasters and international masters, but our peers in the tournament comprised strong local teams with no affiliation to any registered body. Just groups of like-minded people coming together to play chess. They tended to be stronger than our team because we have always insisted that any team representing The Old Frees' Association must consist of members only or otherwise it defeats the purpose of any one joining the association. Anyway, we wouldn't want it any other way. Only members should enjoy the benefits of membership.

So we were never that strong enough to challenge the other teams effectively. The most important objective was to play competitively, immersing ourselves in the games and giving as tough a time to our opponents. Thus, we found ourselves performing with yo-yo results. One good round would follow a bad round, and a bad round would be followed by a good round.

That team (left to right): Yeoh Li Tian, Lye Lik Zang, Nicholas Chan,
Marcus Chan. This team (top to bottom): Ooi Peng Seng, Ung Tay Aik,
Quah Seng Sun, Colin Chong

The challenge began with a first-round encounter with a team calling itself PEBT Selangor. It turned out that this was the strongest team comprising fully of Malaysian players in the tournament. The Malaysian numbers one, two and three were seated at the first three boards and a former national champion propped up their team on the fourth board. A daunting task, if ever there was one, of creating an upset. And as things went, we were beaten 0-4 by them. But I almost drew with 15-year-old Lye Lik Zang (Malaysian number three) if I had not missed a resource at a critical point in our game. Very, very small consolation.

This 0-4 result set the trend for us in the rest of our games. We won 4-0 in the second round, lost 1½-2½ in the third round, won 3-1 in the fourth round, lost 0-4 in the fifth round (I overlooked a threat which lost me three pawns in a row), won 3½-½ in the sixth round, lost ½-3½ in the seventh round, won 2½-1½ in the eighth round (I won my game after a comedy of errors) and lost ½-3½ in the ninth round. Total points were 15½ out of 36, which meant we finished in 45th position out of 73 teams. Seeing that we had a pre-tournament ranking of 44th position. our final standing was more of less up to par.

Maybe I should also mention here that there aren't many pictures of the Young Old Frees in the Merdeka tournament. Except for the above picture, which I requested someone to take, there were no other pictures of us playing together as a team. The reason was because the organisers had banned all players from bringing their bags, mobile phones and watches into the tournament hall to prevent cheating in all forms.

Cheating, you may ask? Yes, cheating! And analogue watches were also banned? Strange as it may sound, yes, we couldn't even wear our analogue watches. The ban covered both analogue and digital (smart) watches. Because in recent months, a few Malaysians have been involved in a spate of cheating in chess tournaments both at home and abroad. Notoriously, Malaysians have made quite a name for themselves. The blanket ban took everyone by surprise as we had to keep everything in the hotel room or entrust our belongings with the tournament helpers outside the hall. We chose the former. Therefore, we were all in incommunicado mode for three hours on the first day and six hours on the second day. Too bad if you had tried to contact us!