One step forward and two steps back

This post title is part of the lyrics from a song called "Not meant to be".
It also sums up the mentality of a certain chess official and organizer.

The Sarawak Chess Association is organising a Sarawak Team Championship in Sibu, Sarawak. Each state can send four players. While it is billed as a team championship, in reality it is a seven round individual Swiss. The state team score will be the combined individual scores from their four players.

What is really interesting is that there will be state and individual prizes. Prizes are attractive too, $2000 for individual first prize and another $2000 for the winners of the state championship.

But what really caught my eye is one of the regulations and it goes. "This championship is opened to all Malaysian citizens only. However, players who have represented Malaysia in the last Chess Olympiad are not permitted to take part."

Eh?

The last olympiad is of course Dresden 2008, and the players affected are Mas, Yee Weng, Mok , Edward Lee and myself.

My sources told me that this rule was to prevent one (and only one player) from the above five, from taking part. Nice to know I'm just collateral damage. Anyway who is being targeted? Apparently the player is a Sarawakian himself. Still clueless? Ok, the said player has been likened to a jungle animal lately.

My suggestion, change it to read "Anyone who has made an IM norm recently".

With this type of mentality, no wondor we are lagging far behind the rest of the chess world.

Now sing it together with me now...

It's like one step forward and two steps back
No matter what I do you're always mad
And I, I can't change your mind
I know it's like trying to turn around on a one way street