A humbling experience

I FELT humbled last weekend. Never in my three decades as a player and commentator have I seen 14 visually impaired chess players sit down opposite their sighted opponents to play in a chess tournament.

I was at the Wisma Penyayang in Penang for a special occasion, the St Nicholas Home for the Visually Impaired’s first-ever chess tournament in celebration of the home’s 75th anniversary.

The visually impaired players had all come from Kuala Lumpur to Penang to compete on an equal footing with 18 players from the Penang Chess Association.

A visually impaired player (right) feeling his way around
the board as he gets a helpful hand from his sightful
opponent.

A visually impaired player (right) feeling his way around the board as he gets a helpful hand from his sightful opponent.

As I watched the proceedings during the two-day tournament, I could not help but wonder what sort of steely character lay within these 14 brave men and women. To me, it had looked like an uneven contest.

Our PCA players held the visual advantage of being able to look all over the chessboard; their glances taking in all 32 pieces and 64 squares. But while they certainly could look, I began wondering whether they could perhaps see everything at all. Was it really an advantage?

Initially, I had perceived the visually impaired players’ sightlessness as a major handicap, but while these people could not see with their eyes, their fingers did all the seeing for them.

Granted, when playing chess, the visually impaired will need to use their special chessboards. They need to feel and touch all the pieces; but they know where the pieces are, and where the pieces are moving. It was fascinating to watch them.

But this distinction aside, there is basically nothing else that separates the sighted from the non-sighted at a chess game. Calculations are still made in the head and the decisions transmitted to the little pieces at the tips of their fingers.

Really, there is very little difference in the thinking process of a sighted or non-sighted chess player. The chess game is indeed the only significant game in the world where the sighted and non-sighted can play on equal terms. Perhaps the only area that the visually impaired lose out is in experience as they may have little opportunity to improve.

Visually impaired player Mah Hassan (left)
with organiser Daud Amin from the St
Nicholas Home.

 That is why I consider this tournament to be so significant. Despite their visual handicap and the disparity in playing strengths, the 14 visually impaired players were willing to compete with us. All they requested was that they be given more time to think.

Let me say something too about the behaviour of the PCA players. Most were in their teens and very few of them had played against visually impaired players before. Yet they knew that their opponents were not to be taken lightly. One of the PCA boys remarked after a game: “Despite their handicap, I felt they were more focused.’’

And our players were extraordinarily patient. When any of the visitors wanted to go to the restroom, without hesitation the boys would place their visually impaired friend’s hand on their shoulders and lead them there.

When this scene was repeated countless times during the tournament, I knew that they had learnt a valuable lesson in life which they would not forget easily.

UP NEXT

Kepong Open

FOR the eighth year running, the Parent-Teacher Association of Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan (Cina) Kepong Dua in Kuala Lumpur will be organising the Kepong junior chess open tournament. This annual event, which is divided into five age categories, will be played on Oct 28 in the school hall.

Children born in 1993 or later will be eligible to take part in the under-eight section, and the winner will receive the SJK (C) Kepong 2 PIBG trophy.

The winner of the under-10 section will get the Cheah Lim Choy trophy, the under-12 winner will win the Pan Chew Kong trophy, the under-14 winner will receive the Kong Foo Leong trophy and the under-16 winner, the Datuk Tan Kim Hor trophy.

There are 12 prizes for each age group. The top winners in each age group will receive cash prizes, while the other winners will get consolation prizes. The best girl and the best school will also get prizes.

Entry fees are RM7 for pupils of the school and RM12 for other players.

Lunch and snacks will be provided for all players, and the first 100 entries will be given souvenirs.

For more information, contact F.L. Wong at % 019-226 8109 / 03-6276 4197 between 3pm and 10pm.

Penang Grand Prix

The Penang Chess Association will be holding the fourth leg of its chess circuit at the Residents’ Association of Bayan Baru clubhouse on Nov 11. This tournament is open only to PCA members.

There will be six rounds, and eight cash prizes will be offered. The top prize is RM200. The players will also earn GP points that may qualify them for the finals of the Grand Prix circuit which will be held later this year or next year.

Entry fee is RM10 per player. For more information, contact Ooi Kiem Boo at % 04-226 2209 or Ung Tay Aik at % 017-477 5418.

Big challenges ahead

IF YOU think that running a regional chess competition is a piece of cake, you should think again. Better still, ask the students of Universiti Malaya’s second residential college what it is like to hold an ambitious project like their annual Grand Asian Chess Challenge (GACC).

They will tell you that it is not easy. The biggest headache is the daunting task of tracking invitations after they have been sent to the universities and other tertiary-level learning institutions in the region. There is the nail-biting suspense of waiting for these institutions to say whether they are participating or not.

Even if they had said that they are coming, anything can still happen between their confirmation and arrival. Nothing is ever certain until you actually meet them at the airport’s arrival hall.

Take this year, for example. According to Teh Ooi Kock of the GACC organising committee, there were quite a number of foreign universities that had told them that they would be coming but because of the Sept 11 tragedy in New York, many universities have decided to change their plans.

At this point, only the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Lahore University of Management, Mulund University of Commerce (India), Pure University (India), University of Colombo, University of Peracheniya (Sri Lanka), Catholic University of Parahyangon (Indonesia), Gunadarma University (Indonesia) and Sharif University (Iran) are among the confirmed entries.

It will be another two weeks before the tournament finally starts on Oct 19 and until then, it will be a nervous wait for the GACC committee.

Nevertheless, Teh is confident that the reduced number of foreign teams and players can be offset by the support from the local universities and colleges.

At present, however, only the Selangor and Malacca campuses of the Multimedia University, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, Universiti Malaya and Universiti Sains Malaysia have confirmed.

It is still rather uncertain whether others like the Tunku Abdul Rahman College, International Islamic University and the University Malaya Sarawak will register for the GACC this year but the organisers are rather hopeful.

Said Teh: “We wish to appeal to our friends in the local institutions, especially those who have yet to commit themselves, to support this annual event and confirm their entries early so that Malaysia can continue with this fine tradition.”

The GACC started six years ago as an experimental project by the Universiti Malaya’s second residential college’s students. Back in 1996, it was confined only to the Asean region and there were only 11 teams taking part.

The inaugural title was won by the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, which had entered four teams for the competition. The university even took the second prize, and it was left to the home-grown team from the Universiti Malaya to take the third prize.

The second year’s tournament was won by the Gunadarma University from Indonesia with Vietnam’s Hue University taking the second prize and the Institut Teknologi Bandung of Indonesia coming third.

By the time the third GACC was organised in 1998, the organisers had decided to expand their coverage to the whole of the Asian continent. There were teams from West Asia taking part for the first time.

Iran’s University of Khorassan emerged champion in the third GACC but the local teams from Universiti Telekom and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia had their best show by taking the second and third places.

The 1999 edition of the GACC produced one of the most interesting results. The title went to the Mongolian State Pedagogical University, which was playing for the first time. Second was Indonesia’s Gunadarma University and third, the Rizal Technological University from the Philippines.

Last year’s GACC was one of the most successful. Taking part were teams from as far away as Beirut (the American University of Beirut) and the United Arab Emirates. The Gunadarma University won the GACC for the second time, and finishing second was the Higher College Of Technology from the UAE. University Of Peradeniya from Sri Lanka was third.

This year, Royal Selangor steps into the picture by sponsoring a beautifully handcrafted challenge trophy that is crowned with gold-plated king and queen chess pieces. Standing 38cm high and designed by the company’s in-house designers, the handcrafted trophy took two craftsmen a month to complete.

The GACC tournament will be played as a nine-round Swiss event at the university’s second residential college from Oct 19. There will be both a team and an individual event.

Time control is two hours per game for each player. For every round, each team is required to field at least one woman as one of their four players.

According to Teh, the firm favourite in this year’s team event is the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. Among their players are two of China’s top players, grandmaster Peng Xiao Min who has an international rating of 2,629 points and woman grandmaster Wang Pin who is rated at 2,504 points.

The GACC website is at http://www. geocities.com/gacc_malaysia/index.html while enquiries can be directed to Tong Wai Yee (% 012-676 8582), or Yap Chee Keong (% 012-662 4843) or e-mail: gacc_6@hotmail.com.

St Nicholas turns 50

The St Nicholas Home for the Visually Impaired in Penang is 50 years old this year and as part of its jubilee celebrations, the Home is organising a special chess tournament on Oct 13 and 14.

This event, run with the technical expertise of the Penang Chess Association, will pit a maximum of 20 visually impaired players against an equivalent number of sighted players from Penang.

The visually impaired players will be from the Society of the Blind Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, led by their most successful player, Mah Hassan, who is a senior legal officer with the Securities Commission.

When I met Mah Hassan in KL recently, he was very excited about the whole project.

“We are looking forward to this special event that the St Nicholas Home is organising. It is the first time we are having a visually impaired organisation playing an active part in holding a chess competition anywhere in the country,” he said.

“The Society of the Blind Malaysia is ready to contribute by arranging for 16 to 20 of our top players to blitz your players in this very traditional game,” he added.

It is actually a big challenge to play against a non-sighted player. For one thing, it can be rather unnerving for a first-timer to play chess with the visually impaired.

They have their own separate chessboards with raised and sunken squares in place of the normal black and white squares, and each of these squares have a hole in their centres. A corresponding feature of their chess set is that all the pieces are mounted on little cylindrical pegs that fit nicely into the holes.

When a visually impaired player plays chess, more often than not, he will be concentrating on the chess board, and feeling the pieces and the board with his hands as he decides on his strategy. The “touch move” rule obviously does not apply to him until the chess clock is punched.

The sighted player need not have to use the same board as his opponent. He has the choice of concentrating on his game using a regular chess set. However, the sighted player is required to assist his opponent by announcing or pointing out to him the moves that have been made.

Speed chess is, of course, unheard of in games between sighted and non-sighted players and I knew that Mah Hassan was just jesting when he said that he wanted to play blitz. The visually impaired players will normally require nothing less than a 45-minute game for a decent match and to compensate for their handicap.

For the St Nicholas jubilee celebration tournament, the format will be a five-round event with a one-hour time control per player for each game. There will be three rounds on Oct 13 and two rounds on Oct 14.

The players from the Penang Chess Association will be selected by invitation only, but spectators are welcomed at the St Nicholas Home next weekend to watch this interesting contest.