KARACHI: As the three-day Sindh Chess Championship came to a close at the auditorium of the NJV Government Higher Secondary School on Monday night with Awaad Mirza laying claim to the title, the main talking point was what’s next for not only him but the top players at the event.

The top 10 players from the championship, organisers Sindh Chess Association claimed, have qualified for the National Championship but with the Chess Federation of Pakistan currently suspended by International Chess Federation (FIDE), there is no date for the nationals.

The situation is expected to be resolved once the CFP elections are held on Saturday in Islamabad but with the country’s chess fraternity deeply split, there seems to be no end in sight for the travails of the country’s chess players.

It is now 14 years since the Pakistan was last represented at the Chess Olympiad, the game’s biggest stage, and while the world is competing to produce the youngest Grand Master, the country is yet to produce one.

According to FIDE Master Mohammad Waqar, it is the lack of exposure that has seen Pakistan fall behind the rest of the world.“It’s not a question about talent,” Waqar told Dawn on the sidelines of the Sindh Championship. “Pakistan has never held an international event and our players never had the chance to test themselves regularly at the highest level.”

Pakistan was suspended by FIDE in August 2021 after disputed CFP elections in July that year. Waqar Ahmed, who was the general secretary at that time, accuses FIDE of forcing the suspension because it wants to have one of its favoured officials to be elected CFP president.

“It wants Mr. Hanif Qureshi to be elected president in place of Mr. Mirza Mohammad Afridi,” Waqar told Dawn on Tuesday. “There is another group led by Mr. Amin Malik which is also in contesting the election.”

Those same thoughts were echoed by SCA secretary Mohammad Wasif Nisar, an International Arbiter of FIDE, a day earlier during the Sindh Championships.

“The politics in the sport has taken it nowhere, really,” he told Dawn. “That has also seen parallel bodies all claiming to CFP.”

But Raja Gauhar, the Punjab Chess Association secretary, has a different view.

“It is Hanif Qureshi who has done the most for chess in the country,” he told Dawn on Tuesday. “He is the man for chess in the country. And FIDE’s move will save chess in Pakistan.”

In this vicious power struggle, the most affected ones are the players.

National Master Shahzaib Khan, who finished in fourth place at the Sindh Champ­ionship, said the uncertainty in the CFP has seen the players miss out on crucial rating points required to move levels up to that of the Grand Master.

We can become good players by playing each other but at a certain point, your game won’t improve, we need international exposure to reach that next level,” Shahzaib told Dawn.

“You need a beehive if you want honey. To produce a Grand Master, you need a particular system and as long as that system isn’t created we can never produce one.”

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2022