Of Another Malaysian Chess Festival - 2012

The 9th edition of the Malaysian Chess Festival is set to start from 20th August 2012, immediately after Hari Raya celebration. Whilst international players are expected to arrive at the venue on the first day of Hari Raya on 19th August to check in their accommodation, the players meeting will only be conducted the next day at 11:00am with the first round to start immediately after. With the actual games starting only on the 2nd day of Raya, it will allow some time for local players and enthusiasts (especially the Muslims) to celebrate the first day of Eid Fitri and enjoy the Chess Festival from the second onwards.

For this year's edition, it has been a challenge for the organizers to find the most suitable dates for the event - what more with the coming of Chess Olympiad in Istanbul to be held just immediately after the event concludes. With Istanbul dates just around the corner, the idea was to make the Chess Festival a stopover for many players who are en route to Turkey to play in the Festival as a warm up event before the big game. The other idea was of course to take advantage of the long school holiday to encourage participation from students who makes up the largest chess population in the country. 

Another significant change that was made was to change the time control for the three main individual events to Rapid format, forgoing the usual classical format that has been used since the Festival first started in 2004. The time format for the ASTRO Team event and the SWENSEN Age Group event remains status quo and will be conducted once the individual events have concluded.

With the event timing producing the greatest challenge, this years event has attracted less than expected entries for all the Individual events prompting the organizer to combine all three individual events - 9th IGB Dato Arthur Tan Open, Tan Sri Lee Loy Seng Seniors and AmBank Challenge, into a single event to make it more respectable. Although it is now a single event, the organizer will maintain the category prizes for the Open section, Senior section (above 50) and Amateur section (below 2000 FIDE Rating) albeit a slight reduction in the total prize fund offered.

To make it more interesting, Dato Tan Chin Nam, the adviser for the festival has agreed with the proposal to reduce the entry fees for the event to RM50 for players with FIDE rating and RM100 for players without any FIDE rating. As usual, all titled players will continue to enjoy free entry for the event as per the event's traditional practice.With more than RM45,000 total prize fund given out for the Individual events, and the low entry fees for participants, this will definitely be the most lucrative event ever offered to players with regards to the entry fees/prize fund ratio given out. A definite attraction for more players especially the local ones, to play in this year's Chess Festival while enjoy the long Hari Raya and school break - a Raya angpow of a different sorts!

For those who would like to know more about the event, please contact the Organizer, En Abdul Hamid Majid at +6019.215.8098 or write to him at aham@pc.jaring.my. 

Entry forms for the individual events can be downloaded by clicking HERE whilst entry forms for all the other events (Team, Swensen, etc) can be downloaded by clicking HERE

Look forward to seeing everyone at the 9th Malaysian Chess Festival 2012