Welcome back, Siti Zulaikha Foudzi

The determined - some say hungry - look that eight-time national women's champion Siti Zulaikha bt Foudzi was giving Nur Nabila bt Azman Hisham in the third round of the national women's chess championship yesterday. Nur Nabila herself is a five-time national women's champion. This epic struggle ended drawn. (This picture comes courtesy of Wanz Lily.)

As I write this, the fifth round of both the Malaysian closed championship and Malaysian women's closed championship are going on in Bangi, together with a new event, Malaysian challengers closed championship. Good of the Malaysian Chess Federation to introduce the above third-mentioned event for aspiring players who may feel the main events are too daunting for them. In any case, there is a rating ceiling of 1600 Elo points for the challengers event.

I see many familiar names, both the veterans and the young upstarts, among the participants of the Malaysian closed and the Malaysian women's closed events. But I am very pleasantly surprised by the return of our Woman International Master, Siti Zulaikha bt Foudzi, to the 64 squares. Fifteen long years, she has been away!

As far as I can remember, the last time that she sat at the chessboard was in October 2007 when she played in two Fide-registered classical chess tournaments in Macao. The first was an open Swiss event with 79 players while the second was an exclusive eight-player round-robin tournament that followed from the Swiss.

After those two events, Siti Zulaikha vanished from the chess scene while she pursued her studies and then ventured out into a career in medicine. The last I heard of her was that she was a medical officer in a government clinic in Kuching, Sarawak.

Siti Zulaikha first came to my notice in 1999 when she won the national women's chess champion. She went on to dominate women's chess in the country by retaining this title for seven more years until the 2006 championship. It was like she was a constant in Malaysian chess while other champions came and gone away. But even such constancy needs to end somehow and it ended for her in the 2007 national women's championship.

During these eight active years from 1999 till 2006, she attained the Woman International Master title. I had written in my chess column of 23 June 2006 that:

Her first was at the Commonwealth chess championship in Mumbai, India, way back in Apr 2003. From nine games, she scored the required four points. At that time, her notable opponents included woman grandmaster Ramaswamy Aarathie, international master Bakre Tejas and woman international master Swati Ghate.

Her second norm was at the world girls’ chess championship, also played in India, in Nov 2004. She played 13 games and achieved 7½ points against players such as woman grandmasters Anna Ushenina and Ekatyerina Korbut, and woman international masters Karavade Eesha, Tania Sachdev and Marties Benadorp.

Siti’s third norm was achieved at the Calvia Chess Olympiad two years ago where she obtained five points from nine games. In this event, she had played against woman grandmaster Eva Repkova, international master Lilit Mkrtchian and four woman international masters.

For good measure, Siti had also scored a norm at Turin where she scored 5½ points from nine games. Her opponents included woman grandmaster Zhao Xue, international master Svetlena Petrenko and six woman international masters.

Anyway, I am so glad that she has come back to chess. In this year's Malaysian women's chess championship, she is the natural first seed; her rating points are head and shoulders above the rest of the field. But whether she can play as well as before remains to be seen. The country has seen so many new potential players among the women and they will give her a run for her money, so to speak. No matter how the rest of the tournament goes, no matter the results, it is good to have her back. It will be good if she continues playing the occasional chess tournaments as long as time allows her.

Welcome back, Siti Zulaikha!