Mr. Best Player defended his title, beating the Malaysian rep resoundingly while he's at it :P
The invitational was a complete disaster.. My team lost to eventual champions UPSI B and we only managed to get third prize.. But the worse part has to be our issue with K.. Our strategy was to put the 'best' college players at the lower ranked boards and put a sacrificial lamb at the first board.. And almost unanimously, we all picked K.. He was totally hurt by what we did that he pasted 'Sacrificial Lamb' across his own participant's tag.. He said now he knows who he is in our Chess Club and since we were expecting him to lose all his games, he might as well not play.. Only then did I finally realize the magnitude of our actions and I offered to play at the first table but he adamantly refused.. And what did we have to show for our strategy? Third prize.. Our defence of last year's title failed..
What's more, all the other participants left the invitational on a sour note.. This morning at 6.45am, my KMB friend called to say that there was no water in their apartment.. I rushed to their block with keys to another spare apartment which still had water in its tank.. The KMB group had to climb 6 flight of stairs just to have their morning shower.. Desperately, I called Abg R for help, but even he didn't know what to do.. He just provided me with more keys to other apartments just in case the teams from UPSI face the same problem.. Later at the hall, one of the UPSI players commented on the lack of drinking water since the cafe was closed and there was no available water filters around their block area..
Before the last round, there was a dispute about us not following official FIDE tournament rules because we were counting team wins as the tiebreaker instead of team points.. But we had already briefed them about this in the beginning and I didn't think we should've changed the rules mid-tournament just to accomodate others.. The closing ceremony was late by a good 30 minutes because we had to wait for the certificates to be printed out on the spot, with Mr. M on hand to sign them straight away.. Overall, it left a really bad impression to everybody present.. Somebody even asked whether we did all this ad-hoc since he noticed our plain leaflets which were in contrast to last year's full coloured designs..
All in all, it was one tournament to forget.. If only I could erase part of my memory, this past weekend would've been long gone.. I hate the way we did everything at the very last minute and I hate the way K hates me now.. I can't even bear to look at him straight in the eye without feeling guilty.. B got an SMS from a supposedly 'anonymous' sender (I know who you are, and no, it's not K) who blasted us all out for our horrendous invitational.. He said congratulations for getting 3rd place in our college and for making our college look bad because of our poor organization skills.. The moment I saw that message, I totally fumed.. But I realized that everything he said was true.. We could've done a lot better, but we just didn't..
There were a few positive moments, nevertheless.. Having the Malaysian rep over meant more exposure to our college.. His dad, who's the Vice President of CAS is interested in holding a regional chess competition with our college as its venue.. Plus, I had a moment with a 24-year-old UPSI player who called me his idol :P
Oh well, I guess there's just nothing I can do about it right now.. Being human is all about making mistakes.. But I have to remind myself that although it's OK to make mistakes, I'm supposed to learn from them instead of being merely accepting :P
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NHA at 4:59 PM ::
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