USM chess team tournament

When was the last time that I played in the team tournament at Universiti Sains Malaysia? Possibly a decade ago? It has been so long that I can't remember. One of the reasons why I had avoided this tournament was the general inefficiency and delays. Invariably, their tournament would start at least an hour after the advertised time because they had to cope with last-minute entries, changes to the teams' line-ups, updating the amendments to the pairing system. All these had added to the delays and general frustration in the playing hall. But yesterday, I was surprised to see that conditions have vastly improved. I was prepared for prolonged delays but the tournament started almost on time; maybe only 15 minutes off the stated time.

The USM team chess tournament is now in its 29th year. I remember in the first few years of its inception, the Penang Chess Association was heavily involved with advising their Bridge and Chess Club on the organisational and technical aspects. The USM Bridge and Chess Club had taken inspiration from the GACC chess tournament in Kuala Lumpur which was organised by the University of Malaya, and wanted to emulate its success. 

GACC stood for the Grand ASEAN Chess Challenge when the tournament was first conceived and along the way, it evolved into the Grand Asian Chess Challenge. At first, universities in the ASEAN countries came to compete in the GACC but later, the net was cast wider to encompass universities from the wider Asia. 

Anyway, the USM had approached the Penang Chess Association when I was still its secretary, and I readily said Yes to them. Yes, the Penang Chess Association would lend our assistance and support. I saw yesterday that the Penang Chess Association was still involved but now, more on the technical aspects of updating the important Swiss Manager system.

The faces of the USM Bridge and Chess Club change every year as new batches of students come and go. And they are from everywhere around the country, here to study at the USM. And their involvement in this tournament means credit points to them during their studies here. Their club advisor has also changed since the last time I played. Then, my old classmate, Prof Teoh Siang Guan was their advisor but like me, he has retired and since then, disappeared from the USM scene.

This year's tournament went better for us than I had expected. We, the team from The Old Frees' Association, finished third in the standings. apart from myself on the third board, we had Liong Ing Kiat on first, Ung Tay Aik on second and Vesyal Arulsyankar on fourth. Vesyal is our junior member who played with us at the astro Merdeka team event in Kuala Lumpur last year. Luckily, he was free to play yesterday as a last-minute stand-in for Terry Ong who was down with a Covid-19 infection two days earlier. The age gap difference for our team was, what, 50 years?

The problem with me is that in the last 10 years or so, I have been unable to remember my games once they are completed. It is so unlike in the past when I was younger and could replay my games once they are finished. Now, I can only remember the results, maybe how I had played the openings and not much else! The scourge of growing old! Like, for example, yesterday. I had two especially good games in the first (knight versus bishop ending) and sixth (beating Looi Xin Hao) rounds, but I can't remember the sequence of moves at all. I also remember that I had a satisfactory touch-and-go win but was it in the third or fifth game? Gosh, darn it! Impossible to remember at all....