Dear Editor,
With reference to your Sports Scope: Our opinion, headlined ‘Gagged’ about the National Chess Champion not being able to defend his title in the championship, it is my humble opinion that the Guyana Chess Federation (GCF) has made numerous blunders in the recent past and continues to do so without any sanction being levelled against it.
Wendel Meusa is right to be peeved at the federation for not allowing him to defend his title. He has been banned after making an issue about players smoking and drinking during a tournament and also about the allocation of colours.
Let me divert a little to remind the GCF about an incident concerning colours a few years back. The incident between Mr Roy Sharma and President Tiwari stands out as a gross misinterpretation of the laws of chess by Mr Irshad Mohamed, the tournament director, yet no sanction was levelled against him. According to FIDE rules, when a chess game is finished and the results handed in, no one can change the result as reflected on the players’ signed score sheet. As an example, if two players played a game and player A won the game on the chessboard but inadvertently signed his score sheet to indicate that player B had won, that would be the result reflected in the game score.
Mr Roy Sharma has not entered another tournament since then because of the administration. What a waste of talent, for Mr Sharma is the only chess player I know of in recent years that took the time to share his knowledge with schoolchildren wanting to learn chess. He did a programme at Bishops’ High School some time back, and I understand that he has started to give instruction at Rosignol Primary and a few other schools in the area
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After three years of harping on that chess is being developed among the youngsters, can the Chess Federation say what programmes they have instituted to that end. All we are seeing is the usual players over and over again. What has happened to the rest of Guyana? It seems as if the Guyana Chess Federation is the Georgetown Chess Federation.
As you rightly stated in ‘Gagged,’ Editor, our sports administrations are lacking insight and are more concerned with their well-being and perks than the proper development of the sports and players involved.
I wish Mr Irshad Mohamed would provide for perusal the allocations of colours for all the tournaments and not just two, so that we would be able to evaluate Mr Meusa’s claim of the preferential allocation of colours.
How can one tell an athlete or player that he is banned for six months and yet during the National Chess qualification, there was an announcement that seven qualifiers along with the National Champion would be vying for the title. Why did the federation not announce at the beginning of the said tournament that the defending champion would not be allowed to defend his title?
Whilst we are at it Mr Tiwari should be sanctioned for the trip to the Bahamas and a proper investigation done. Also the fiasco that led to Guyana abstaining from voting in the recently held FIDE congress should be fully investigated and the public told about what transpired. Mr Tiwari is on record as representing Guyana in the Bahamas, but did the Guyana Chess Federation mandate Mr Tiwari to represent it, or did Mr Tiwari make that decision on his own? I am sure the minutes of the meeting where Mr Tiwari was mandated to represent Guyana can be made accessible so that all doubts can be erased about whether Mr Tiwari acted on his own, or on behalf of our chess players. As you stated in an earlier article, ‘Karpav’s Gambit,’ it seems that Mr Tiwari fell into Zugzwang, a positive on the chess board that leads to a loss of material.
If Guyana is to become the powerhouse of chess again, it will have to be under the leadership of a committed administration which is dedicated to the development of the game.
Coming back to tournaments, it boggles the mind that in some tournaments the tournament director can determine by a tie-breaking system who is in the lead by a fraction of a point, but in other tournaments, there are joint leaders. Consistency seems to have been lost somewhere along the way and I only hope that the executives of the Chess Federation arrest this situation before it gets odious.
I hope that some of these issues and discrepancies can be put to rest and that chess will be the winner in the long run.
Yours faithfully,
Rudy Thomas
