Singapore Schools Internet Chess Carnival 2002

Organising Secretary, SSICC 2002.

By Junior Tay

31st August 2002 is the first day of the 3rd term week-long school holidays for Singaporean students. However, on this day, some 2700+ school students from Singapore will descend to their school computer terminals and log on to Chessbase's Playchess.com server!

The occasion? Well, it's the Singapore Schools Internet Chess Carnival (see http://pc-connect.com.sg/chess/ )! The concept of this tournament came about following the success of the 164 strong 1st North Zone Internet Chess Championship which was organised by  Rivervale Primary School in collaboration with the Free Internet Chess Server. The VIPs for the event, Mr Wang Mong Lin, Director- Corporate Services, Ministry of Environment (and an ICCF Senior International Master) and Mr Tan Yap Kwang, Director - Education Technology Division / Examination Branch, challenged Rivervale Primary School Principal Mr Yeo Ah Tee to run an Internet Chess 'Fun' event for all Singapore Schools. . Hence, the Singapore Schools Internet Chess Carnival was born. A committee comprising officials from Rivervale Primary School, Educational Technology Division and Information Technology Branch was set up to coordinate the event.

Said Mr Tan, "This Internet Chess Festival is intended to be a fun event, not a full-fledged chess tournament.; Through this event, we hope that more students would take up chess and engage in meaningful activities on the Internet. As this is the first time that we are organising such a large-scale event, technical problems may arise but we believe we can contain these. We see these as learning points as we explore the potential of the Internet as a medium for students to engage in intellectually challenging activities such as chess". A committee comprising officials from Ministry of Education's Educational Technology Division, Information Technology Branch and Rivervale Primary School was set up to work on this tournament in early June 2002. Hence, we approached Chessbase GMBH to discuss the feasibility of holding this event.

Chessbase's CEO Matthias Wüllenweber also liked the idea of such a scholastic event. "The Interschools championship sounds like a nice event and we would definitely support it with prizes", said the inventor of the Chessbase database which is estimated to be used by 90+% of professional chess players.  And support it Chessbase did, as they have since pledged 100 prizes worth of Chessbase software products for the top finishers in the event! To top it off, the Ministry of Education, Singapore will be giving out a total of 235 trophies for 10 categories. The categories are Lower Primary Boys/Girls, Upper Primary Boys/Girls, Lower Secondary Boys/Girls,  Upper Secondary Boys/Girls and Junior College Boys/Girls. For the past two months, we have been in constant contact with Mr Wüllenweber to fine-tune the tournament specifications.

Chessbase CEO Matthias Wüllenweber

The current 2727 competitors (and still growing) figure is most likely a world record for an Internet Chess Event. It compares favourably to the previous record of 1460 players taking part in the  III Dos Hermanas Internet Chess Championships, March 2002 run by the Internet Chess Club. Chessbase has since made some modifications to their playchess.com server to prepare for the expected huge turnout. This included the formation of 32 tournament rooms; some 2800+ free playing accounts for the participants and modified tournament director software.  Moreover, Chessbase's experienced tournament director Martin Fischer will help to oversee the run-up to the tournament and provide technical recommendations. E-Station ( http://www.e-station.com.sg ) has also chipped in by heavily subsidizing the cost of 30 Tournament Director Internet-ready terminals at their premises in Suntec City Shopping Centre.

With so many competitors, it is probably inevitable that some players might experience Internet disconnections which might affect their play. Hence, for the competitors who are unfortunate enough to get disconnected or have their screens freezing on them, there is a 5 round Swiss prize event for them held after the commencement of the SSICC preliminary rounds.

To ensure that the players can prepare themselves with the Chessbase server, the organizers have provided free tutorial sessions for the 116 schools participating in August. At least 10 mock tournaments have been organized for them over the past  two weekends. So if you happen to see online players with the handle starting with 'ssicc', you will know that the handler is a Singaporean student preparing for the event.

Singapore's UI2 Champ - Howard Chiu

I spoke to a couple of Singaporean students about the forthcoming tournament.

Howard Chiu is the current National Under 12 chess champion and he had won the Under 10 championship last year too. He mused, "I fancy my chances of winning but then again, I will be under pressure as there is only 5 minutes each to finish the game". Howard is currently playing in the World Under 16 Chess Olympiad in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I would also like to warn the competitors that Howard's Olympiad team-mate, 13 year old Jason Goh has been practicing hard recently, chalking up ratings of  >2000 for both blitz and bullet chess.

Singapore's National Chess Champion Luke Leong (ELO 2297) is probably the hot favourite to win the Upper Secondary Boys section. Moreover, the organizers have seeded him into the Grand Finals (7th September 2002) by virtue of his National Champion status. The 16 year old Anglo Chinese (Independent) student has been forgoing International events in recent months to prepare for his GCE 'O' Levels exams. However, he decided to take part in the Chess Carnival because he thinks Internet Chess is convenient and fun.  He added, "Since you won't be facing your opponents directly, you will not get intimidated by them as in over-the-board chess". I  also learnt that speedy Luke had beaten International Masters at bullet chess.

On 7th September 2002, the players who top the preliminary sections will play in a round robin Grand Finals at Rivervale Primary School ( http://schools.moe.edu.sg/rivervps ) for major placings. The Guest of Honour launching the event is Mr Hawazi Daipi, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Education and he will start the curtain raiser by playing an online blitz game with Singapore's Grandmaster Dr Wong Meng Kong ('kong' on the playchess.com server) who will log on to the playchess.com server from Hongkong where he is residing. International Master Dr Hsu Li Yang ('hus' on the playchess.com server) will also be on-line, taking on our young players at blitz chess.

For those interested in checking out Chessbase's playchess.com server, you can download the software from http://www.fritzserver.de/playchesssetup.exe