Huge Tourism Potential In Malaysian Chess

18 December 2010, Kuala Lumpur – In Friday’s edition of the The StarOnline portal, SS Quah discusses about Malaysia becoming a tourist destination for playing international chess tournaments. This was linked to the recent Penang City Heritage International Chess Tournament held recently.

SS Quah reported in the chess article under Lifestyle  :-

If the experience of this year’s Penang Heritage City international chess tournament is anything to go by, there is a huge potential for the country to attract quality sportsmen and sportswomen to come play in our regional tournaments and enjoy the best we can offer at the same time.

Never mind if it is only a regional tournament outside of the Klang Valley. If the event is serious enough and big enough, support from the authorities can mean a big difference in attracting players and tourists to come here.

The biggest surprise awaiting me at this tournament last week was the unusually large number of foreigners in the open section. Of course, I had anticipated that there would be foreign players in the field but I had not expected that there would be so many of them.

I counted 29 of them in the 71-player field, almost all from the countries around us but there was even one from distant Uzbekistan. Pleasant surprise, indeed!

To read more, please click here.

At the Penang City Heritage International Chess was won by IM Oliver Dimakiling of the Philippines and nine of the top 15 prizes were won by nine foreign players.