January 16, 2011

Re: FGM banned from all MCF events


It's so nice of you to only implicitly make a reference to me in your post with your attempt of (humourous? I hope not) irony attached to it, but anyway, the only thing I have to add is; it's not my fault that you used the wrong word. "Throwing a game" implies a deliberate action. The miscommunication caused is not due to an incorrect interpretation on my part, but by your use of such condemning phrases, ironically, "out of context". But fine. Let's forget this. Maybe it is my fault that you didn't know what it meant to "throw a game", since you obviously don't. So okay, maybe I'm sorry.

But above all, you are nothing more than a hypocrite. You are the one spinning stories. Peter Long was giving suggestions. He was not objecting the idea of the incentive. He's the one who facilitated it in the first place. You obviously forget that Peter Long was largely responsible for Edmund Santhara's entry into the Malaysian chess, who, in case you don't know, is the one funding the incentives. Do you think he came all the way from KL to play 1 game in a friendly match (which, for irrelevant reasons, is not exactly at the top of his list of priorities), and to object the incentives put forward by a man whom he introduced to Malaysian chess?

Peter Long may be a controversial man. Some think he causes unnecessary noise, and some think he contributes to Malaysian chess. I personally think he's in the latter, but that's just a normative statement. But many things say that he's a far better person than you. Let's go down this list:

1. He set up a chess academy in KL; the first of it's kind in Malaysia, at least among the widely known ones. He brought in international trainers, certified by FIDE along with a curriculum, tried and tested from the ASEAN Chess Academy. His students included Edward Lee and Kaushal Khandhar, two players who you love to mention in your posts at every opportunity. Within a year of training, they showed significant progress. Today, it most caters to the slightly lower levels because the higher levels were unprofitable, i.e. the high-level trainers were too expensive to keep, and there were insufficient high-level students.

You, on the other hand, set up an academy which just followed the bandwagon after Intchess was set up in Malaysia. You so arrogantly named it like it was going to produce the first Malaysian GM, and proceeded to hire local coaches. Not that they are lousy, but if you think a 2000-rated player is going to train a player into GM-hood, you're terribly wrong. Which notable national players were, at any point in time, students of your academy? And by that, I'm talking about finishing with a top 3 ranking in the National Age-Group, and being offered the chance to represent the country.

2. He has organized huge tournaments in Malaysia; some ASEAN junior team tournament a few years back, and the annual KL Open, which you yourself have been to.

What have you done? Perhaps some small tournaments, one of which included a frenzy of drama (at least that's how you make it out to be), which nobody outside Perak knows, nor cares about. If you have organized an international tournament before, how many people know about it? I don't. And what response did you get, if any?

3. His Elo, if you know what that is, is at least twice of the most I project yours to be, though I don't think we'll ever know.

4. He has played in a chess tournament more than zero times. You, on the other hand, have yet to press the "start" button on a digital clock, or wind an analogue one. In fact, you are the only person in Malaysia who talks about competitive chess and tries to be heard, but with zero technical knowledge yourself. "Practice what you preach"?

5. He has balls. He dares to single out anybody whom he dislikes, and even more so, to do it under his true identity. Even I don't dare to do that. You only go half the way; you say it's someone without disclosing names, but leaving enough clues so that others would know who he is, while hoping that you've left some reasonable doubt to make yourself look pretty.

6. Read the third paragraph.

I am not a spokesman for Peter Long; my point is that he has done many things, and yet many do not immediately see him as a contributor to Malaysian chess. You, on the other hand, have done nothing, and you see yourself spearheading "change".

There are so many other things that show your hypocrisy; you talk about people behaving like gangsters, inappropriate outbursts at the wrong place; yet, being part of the Malaysian contingent of a friendly match in Singapore, you are the one who practically shouted at a man just because he opened his mouth, which you so nicely mentioned explicitly. It does not take a shrink to know that this caused a lot of discomfort during the meeting. Are you proud of this?

You wonder why nobody talks about the outburst of that man in MAS-SIN. First off, I don't understand why you're not on his side. He was being totally unreasonable, just like you! Secondly, there was only one mention of it on Hairul's blog. The rest was just people on the shoutbox. And yes, I think it's sad that nobody mentioned you unreasonably shouting at Peter on their blog. You had to mention it yourself!

In case you didn't realize, the reason why you have have heard some people talking about that outburst guy, but not the Peter Long one...well, you should ask that man whether he heard others talk about him. Hint: Probably not. You don't hear people talking about you shouting at Peter Long, because they don't want you to know that they're talking about you, as they fear it gets them into muddy waters with you. Bravo on that too, Uncle Raymond. Please don't shout at me.

You talk about people having to pay excessively to represent the country. You probably thought that you were making a major contribution by getting AirAsia to sponsor tickets to the ASEAN Age-Group in 2010. You did nothing. Participants had to pay the money they would save on air tickets in exchange for "training", and when there weren't as many players as you hoped for [SLANDER! Deleted], you opened the "training" to anyone willing to pay 30% of what the representatives forked out. [SLANDER! Deleted]. [SLANDER! Deleted]. [SLANDER! Deleted]. You have so much the nerve to talk about preserving the welfare of the Malaysian contingent.


You further demonstrate your lack of knowledge in chess. "You cannot shout at your opponent and then say you cannot play that line or else I lose. You cannot shut your mind to reasoning and then hope to win.". That is the most stupid analogy I have ever seen. You will obviously disagree, for reasons that have been mentioned countless times. But anyone with a rating above 1200, and possibly below, will notice that your little analogy is "not even wrong". You talk so much about learning "life lessons" from a game you can't play.

There are people who think you need to be fixed? No, people think you need to shut up. Or at least learn en passant. That's a start. Then learn the proper way to say it.

You are so arrogant; most people unconsciously do their best to avoid having to apologise. I am no exception. But the biggest problem lies in people who think they are perfect, and make no mistakes. This is you. You misuse the term "throwing a game", and then blame me (and Jimmy prior to that) for not understanding what you said, despite the fact that your sentence structure was so bad that you mentioned a phone ringing, and throwing a game like it was two different things. You find it so difficult to even just say that you used the wrong word, and if you did, then you could have at least managed to follow up by calling me some fancy synonym of "stupid" for not being able to differentiate a vocabulary slip and a serious accusation. Actually, I wonder if you really meant what everyone thought you did, and you're just saying this now to cover your ass.

You are so afraid to name names; you don't even mention me, an anonymous blogger, explicitly. You're not trying to hide/"protect" their identities (if you were, you're an idiot. Unless you were the only witness, the truth gets out there sooner or later). How do you expect to create change in the local chess scene, when you are so fearful of naming those who you see as negative? In your own words, how do you intend to "eliminate the cancer", mein Fürher?

You are useless. You do nothing but talk shit about a new MCF, and what "we"(you) would want. We're not idiots. We know what we want. We don't need someone like you to tell us what is best for the country, Comrade Raymond.

What kind of "new MCF" were you hoping for? I myself have always wanted one, but frankly, a new MCF being founded under the influence of a man who knows no further than the rules (I hope!) of the game is not the type which I envision.

You are still here. You've made it clear with your attention grab at MAS-SIN. You are also an idiot. You've made that clear by updating your blog.

P/S: Your current job involves making money from chess, i.e. "taking shelter in chess" as well. And you once charged kids RM1000 for a 3-day training session.


PP/S: I find it incredibly amusing and somehow frustratingly unintelligent, at the vegetative level, of you when every response you make of me involves accusing me of lying without any reference or questioning of the credibility of what I said about you. Instead you incoherently continue to rattle off the same thing you say in every post you make, albeit with different words.

Yes, delete the comments! Censor all those who oppress you! Silence those who go against you, and soon the motherland shall be glorious! Have you started to remove the faces of those who oppose you from photos yet? Yes, Premier Raymond, keep order in our glorious nation, exterminate the non-people!

January 9, 2011

Malaysia throwing a game at the Olympiad?

Someone told me that recently, Raymond Siew posted something on his blog. This post does not address the main subject of the post (because frankly I'm not really sure on what it's about, especially since the content doesn't seem to relate much to the title. Yet, there are parts of his post that I have to agree with. Whatever. I'm not interested in those parts.). What I'm addressing is his scorching accusation of "[A player] throwing a game [in the Olympiad]". While I don't think it's good policy to attack a not-so-relevant minor detail of someone's "comment", those 3 words carry serious weight with them, especially in the context of the Olympiad while representing Malaysia. There is a huge difference between attacking a player for losing a game by accident, and losing on purpose. Sadly, he did not specify whether his accusation was onto a single player, or the whole team, so I'm not sure on how to carry out my attack.

Now of course, the most obvious argument is the lack of evidence. But I'm not writing this just to point that out. Anybody with a brain larger than a peanut knows that. Besides, most thrown games are hard to prove, since even grandmasters can blunder their queens or mate in 1 move(think Deep Fritz-Kramnik in 2006). Unless you do something so stupid, like replay a very nice-looking game from your database.

So let's give Raymond Siew that, and allow such an accusation without proof. Now, ask yourself this incredibly simple question:

WHY WOULD ANY COUNTRY IN THE OLYMPIAD WANT TO FIX A GAME WITH MALAYSIA?!

Raymond, you have defied mankind's understanding of the human brain by converting whatever that's left of the "reasoning" part of your brain into "talk more about a game that I can barely play" brain matter. Either that or you just lost the ability to think logically.

Let me break it down for you: There are 2 types of countries relative to Malaysia: stronger and weaker/roughly equal in terms of strength.

The stronger countries don't need to fix games with Malaysia. Unless they suddenly happen to be losing, and by then it's not really possible to fix a deal(perhaps you imagined the players saying "$300 for a draw!" and pressing their clocks, and their opponents replying with "$225 and its a deal!" and pressing their clocks.).

Then there's the other two. What do these countries want to fix games with Malaysia for? There's too much to lose for something that has little value. Ranking in the Olympiad gauges where a country stands, and nothing else(unless that ranking is has a medal attached to it). Why would a team pay off another to improve their ranking from, say, 120 to 80? It's false progress if it wasn't earned, and they'd be bluffing themselves.

Now you also need to consider the fact that if a weak team wants to pay off an opponent, they're just going to get knocked off the next round, and their final ranking won't change much if they carried out the deed with more than 1 or 2 rounds to go, unless they managed to continuously bribe their opponents. So maybe they can just buy the last round match? Well, Malaysia won that round.

Perhaps it was just 2 individuals conspiring for a gain in rating? Again, there are better places to do such things. Such as individual tournaments, where the consequences of getting caught are not as serious, and there is actually a chance of winning.

So there's 2 possibilities to a lost game in the Olympiad; perhaps it was a completely fixed game, choreographed so that a game gets thrown after 2 hours of pretend-hard-thinking, so that the opposing team can advance, only to lose the next round to an opponent who will most likely not accept a bribe. And they do this in the Olympiad because most people don't think anyone dares to fix a game, so they make a bluff and do it anyway, because they want to improve their final ranking, or maybe they just want to let the world know that they beat a Malaysian player. The second possibility is that our player just blundered.

Occam's Razor: It could be the first, but isn't it much easier for it to be the second?

If anyone bothered to read Raymond's blog entries and my comments on them, you might remember that my last post was my vow to never visit his blog again. I had a good reason for that: this post. I've wasted my time writing a long article to debunk an incredibly stupid idea from our friend here.