The magic is gone
I come from the small town of Teluk Intan (Perak) and back when I was schooling, chess was magical.
I remember how our small chess club started. It was started by my math teacher who just announced to anyone who was interested to bring a chess set to the library meeting room. About 10 students turned up and that was the beginning of our modest chess club. The school later purchased some diplomat chess sets and elected some club committee members to maintain the chess club. We had weekly playing sessions and introduced ladder challenges where you can challenge someone say ranked 11 and if you beat him, you take his place and he took your place. Simplistic but it was fun. Since my school was a boys-only school, the highlight of the year was actually organising a chess challenge against the girls-only Convent school nearby.
Back then we kept track of local chess via Quah Seng Sun’s weekly column and Petak 64 (and for a brief time NST chess column written by Peter Long). Every week the latest article was pasted on our chess notice board in front of the school. We got to know famous local players such as Kamal Abdullah, Ahmad Muzaffar Mustapha, Chu Kin Nyan, Peter Long, Audrey Wong, Ong Hwa Lu, Seto Wai Ling, Jimmy Liew, Gregory Vijayendran, Eric Cheah, Ng Ek Leong, Ng Ek Teong, Tham Tick Hong, Colin Madhavan, etc. Any active chess club members know of these names but we’ve never had the chance to meet any of these ‘legendary’ names as our chess activity confined within our small town. We never got to play in KL where most of the chess action was at the time. You can imagine what a big deal it was when I got to play in a simul vs IM Jimmy Liew and got autographs from Audrey Wong, Peter Long, Francis Chin and Jimmy in the same tournament.
I say the magic is gone because 20 years later, I’ve met some of these famous names and find that they are just regular people who are exceptionally good in chess at one time or other. I wonder if youngsters today have any local chess heroes? Perhaps today’s chess heroes/idols are Nicholas Chan, Lim Yee Weng, Mas etc.
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Comments
Still got no chance to play in any simul after all this years….
Yes, the hero magic is gone since Karpov-Kasparov era…today generation are impatient nowadays even for any reality TV results…& for most youngsters, chess is zzzZ for them if compared to Manga Cosplay Chess & why old superheroes movies like the Dark Night, Spidey, Smallville still sells after many years!?? We don’t have yet the So’s, Carlsens, etc. Maybe our 1st local GM is the Chosen One for the Quantum leap in chess popularity??
In Malaysia, Chess generally florishes during the lifetime of a school student, beginning somewhere around secondary school and finishing shortly after graduation from college/university. Once you start entering the work force, you generally find your appetite for the game diminishing. Soon you lose to players whom you regularly beat and the quality of your game becomes forgettable. The key point is to ensure those years are memorable.
I was a secondary school kid in PJ during the Jimmy and Christi era. The ‘juniors’ we looked up to then were the likes of Gregory Vijayendran, Ng Ek Leong etc. They were legends which I aspired to be but never quite reached there. Getting your name in Friday’s Malay Mail’s column for finishing top ten in some allegro was a real high.
I had 10 good years (1984 to 1994) from my first to last tournament. I hope you have the same too.
Andrew, i experience the same scenario as you but for today generation ( sounds like i’m, too old
) there probably have different experience…the local newspaper chess column hardly exist( except Quah Seng Sun - The Star) but internet save the day by providing chess related news, stories, games, analysis…etc .
So Andrew probably people (blogger) like us and others that have more or less provide the missing thing that local chess fan have experience before !?