The Eagle has Landed?

The Eagle has Landed is the title of a Jack Higgins book, a fictional war story. A group of German commandos land in World World II England to capture Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bring him back to Germany. I read it when I was a teenager and it was really captivating and written in a vintage Jack Higgins style. It was also made into a successful movie starring the great Michael Caine (think of the butler in The Dark Knight) I recommend both book and movie.

GilaChess uses a similar title to announce the arrival of GM Ziaur Rahman. Ziaur was brought to Malaysia by Dato' Tan Chin Nam. The stated objective is to assist the DAT Chess Centre boost its activities and promote chess learning and teaching.

It cannot be cheap to host a grandmaster here (purported for a whole year). There is his fee, two way air tickets and also board and lodgings to be paid. Also how about the cost for someone to ferry him around?

A day after touchdown at KLIA he was whisked off to Ipoh to compete in the Perak Grand Prix which he won (naturally) with full seven points.

Now I've been scratching my head for the past few days upon reading this news. How does dropping a 2500+ Elo rated grandmaster into a local chess tournament help promote chess? On the contrary it is detrimental as local players are now deprived of a prize (well I presume Ziaur will win the first prize in any local tournament). If the aim is to allow locals a chance, maybe once in a lifetime, to compete against a grandmaster (seven "lucky" players got the opportunity to lose to him), it is better to get him to play simultaneous. This way more can play against him.

I also noticed his name has been entered for the 2010 KL Open. This makes even less sense to me, paying a grandmaster to come and play in a major open in Malaysia. Anybody care to explain the logic here?