Myself and old friend Poompong recently had a recorded chat about the state of chess in Thailand. I chose to ask him because he has become an FM, and an International Arbiter as well, and is involved with many things in Bangkok. I’ve always known him to be an intelligent and well-informed guy with excellent English skills too!
Myself ‘How would you describe the level of interest in chess in Thailand now?’
Poompong ‘If we look back about 10 years ago, chess was not as popular as it is right now. I remember that I played in my very first tournament, the national championships for adults back in 2004, and I remember that I was one of the only two juniors out of all the participants (ed. 24), so now 20 years has passed and you can see that kids are everywhere in the tournaments, and not only that but kids are starting to beat adults as well.’
Myself ‘Why does Bangkok have a lot more schools and tournaments than it used to?’
Poompong ‘It is because of two things adding up together. One is because there are more chess clubs/chess schools popping up. For example, nowadays we have Big Rook Chess Academy, Red Knight Chess Club, we have JCA, and a few more that I didn’t mention. Some of them also entered into international schools and made themselves the after school provider, and this is one of the big reasons why its all happening now. If you actually take a closer look at these kids, these juniors that are playing in the tournaments, most of them can speak English pretty well, they either study in a government school, international programme or study at an international school, and these clubs involved with international schools sometimes organize their championships, the most recent one was at Shrewsbury. They had their own tournament and also challenged other international schools. Regarding their own championships, they usually gather around 250 chess kids.’
Myself ‘Has the government done much to promote chess?’
Poompong ‘The government right, not the TCA (Thai Chess Association)? The government organization that is closest to the chess community is the Sports Authority of Thailand, the S.A.T. The TCA is one of their members and under their direct care. What they do is give a yearly funding to the association, in addition to specific tournaments here and there, so yes you could say the government is helping but our feeling is it is not enough and we are still pretty much on our own.
Myself ‘Are there any obstacles or difficulties facing young chess players today?
Poompong ‘The prime time for young players is usually going to be somewhere from grades 5,6, and 7 until a few years before they enter university because the last few years before they got to university they need to study a lot and read a lot of books to be qualified for university, and some players lose interest in chess along the way. If you are lucky you might see some of these players return once they get to university, some of them just stop some just become inactive. Generally, juniors have two main turning points in their life career, one is when they are about to enter university, and that can be one of the factors that makes these kids stop playing chess, and the second turning point is when they have graduated from the universities and are about to get a job, that can play a big part of things as well it can either make them stop playing chess too or make a come back if their job suits for a chess schedule.’
Myself ‘What does the future look like for chess in Thailand?’
Poompong ‘In order to answer that I need to look back to 10 years ago, and if I were asked back then how chess would look right now, honestly speaking I wouldn’t say I was expecting we would already have an IM, so looking back it seems that chess is doing better than it seemed to be back then, so that’s another clue that chess is growing quite fast and is gaining popularity quite fast as well, and it seem as though its going to keep that way for a while but that is also working world wide in the same way and same pattern but how far and how developed well we will get to that, I’m not quite so sure whether we are going to see a GM or not, I am actually looking forwards to it because right now because Prin (ed. Thai IM) is promising and his dad is very supportive, like he funded Prin to go and play abroad and from what I know he is also going to GM tournaments like those round robin things, so he is pretty close and he was very close to getting his first GM norm in a tournament last month but he was just only half a point away but I think the others will come soon, so I think I’m going to see a GM but that is only because of one particular individual that has a very supportive dad but again this is just one example. I think we are going to see more promising players and one thing I do see for sure is kids are getting better, faster, and younger. The top level of junior 10 years ago was a lot lower than the top juniors nowadays, and I think its going to keep on being like that in the next ten years.’
MJM
Leave a comment