ICE FIDE 1600 Rated Goes From Strength to Strength

By Emran Mohd Tamil

From its inception, the ICE FIDE Rated Under 1600 Series has attracted a total of 320 participants from the five editions held so far. They are not only from Malaysia but India, China and the Philippines!

Since it is an open tournament, just limited to those with a FIDE Rating 1600 and below, age does not matter and anyone can take part.

Our first champion is the 8 years old prodigy Anderson Ang. Since then only Iwan Spassky Schani managed to win it twice, for the first time in the second edition and then again in the fifth edition.

In the third edition it was Wael Abu Garad from China and in the third it was Leo Romitman from the Philippines.

The series has so far produced 53 new FIDE Rated players (which is the main objective for those unrated) and these numbers have greatly exceeded our objectives.

While my co-organiser Shin Azwan and I have been credited with popularizing this format (eight rounds with the time control 30+30), we drew our inspiration from the efforts of Justin Pereira with the Kajang Classical held in December 2017 and then by Cikgu Rose Imah Ina with the SKBJ Classical in February 2018.

Our first ICE FIDE Rated Under 1600 was in March 2018 and has been held almost monthly since then.

We would like here to also acknowledge and thank IA Peter Long for his guidance and also for his sponsorship of the use of the tournament hall at the Institute for Chess Excellence which is also a Regional Asian Chess Federation Academy.

This weekend of 1-2 September will see the sixth edition of ICE FIDE Rated Under 1600 and we are excited to see who our next champion will be.

Registration is still open and can be made via WhatsApp to +60 19 667 5675.