Peter Long on Chess

The World Junior Chess Championship is the real benchmark of talent with many winners graduating to the senior title and many more joining the ranks of the chess elite. Malaysia has not usually sent our young talent to this event, preferring instead the World Youth Championships which is a much weaker tournament as it is an age-group event with a wide variety and range of participants, meaning as in the Olympiad, there is a group fighting for medals, another group behind but with the chance to make an upset or two and with a bit of luck getting onto the top twenty or thirty, then another group really in the middle, and so on. Some of our best and most ambitious have however stepped up to the challenge and to these ranks we add FM and NM Wong Yinn Loong, already a national senior champion last year, the mainstay of the Malaysian team to the World U-16 Olympiad, but whose play this year has seen a dip primarily because he is now very more focused on the SPM exams (so why is he e

http://asianchess.com/news/asian-teams-going-to-the-batumi-olympiad/ Malaysia is ranked 81 on the FIDE Rating List but our team going to Batumi is seeded 108 and so it is a team 27 places below that of a representative side. With our women it looks more normal as they are ranked 59 in the FIDE Rating List and our team to Batumi is seeded 68 which is just 9 places below.