Unrated Champs

Friday May 29, 2009
Unrated champs
CHESS
By QUAH SENG SUN

Malaysia has a list of outstanding chess players who do not have an international rating.

I WAS asked a trivia question last week: Who was the last Malaysian national champion never to have obtained an international rating?

Off-hand, I could not answer him. After all, the national closed chess championship had been held since 1974 and there were quite a number of people who had won the title through the years.

In fact, the Malaysian Chess Federation records showed that there are at least 24 former national champions. There are also eight former national women’s champions. A few of them had won the title more than once but those were the exceptions.

But coming back to the question, Ng Ek Leong was the last national champion never to have an international rating. Ng won the national closed championship way back in 1990. He won the event at a time when there were very few rated players in Malaysia, and the opportunities to earn rating points were even rarer.

But not having an international rating doesn’t mean that a champion is less strong – I wouldn’t want to say “weaker” – than a champion with a rating. No, I would have graded him as up there together with his peers, an equal with the rest of them. Only difference was that he just didn’t have the opportunity to gain his rating.

Today, it’s a completely different scenario. The opportunities to play in internationally rated tournaments have increased. This year alone, we already have the Selangor open. Coming up next will be this year’s national closed chess championship that starts tomorrow.

In fact, we are in the midst of the chess league at the Datuk Arthur Tan Chess Centre in Kuala Lumpur. That itself should be an internationally rated tournament despite it being played on a weekly basis, because of the time control it employs.

Here is the full story.