Blog GilaChess

National rating systems remain important because they serve goals that FIDE ratings cannot fully cover: they support mass participation, local development, and flexible experimentation in a way a global system never will. Malaysia, unfortunately, has done away with national rating. I know, there is MCF rating that serves to replaced the abolished previous national rating. But MCF rating is slightly different.

But let's discuss why this national rating is very much needed:

1. Accessibility and entry into rated chess

• Many national systems are designed to give a rating quickly, sometimes after just one or a few games, which is much more welcoming for beginners and casual club players than FIDE's higher entry threshold and stricter event requirements.
• This fast entry makes it easier to motivate school kids, new adults, and rural players who may never travel to a FIDE-rated event but still want a concrete measure of progress.
• There is a fee to be borne by either the player of the country chess federation to have their tournament rated.

2. Supporting local and small tournaments

• FIDE rating regulations impose requirements on arbiters, reporting formats, and time controls; these can be overkill for small, low-budget or experimental events, especially in developing chess regions.
• There are so many local tournaments that are very informal and never qualify to meet any of the formal FIDE requirement.
• A national list lets organizers rate local weekend events, club leagues, school circuits, or "fun" formats that don't fully fit FIDE criteria, keeping those events meaningful without extra bureaucracy or fees.

3. Development pathway inside the country

• National ratings create a clear internal ladder: school → district → state/region → national level, even before players are strong or active enough to appear meaningfully in the FIDE list.
• Federations can use their own ratings for local seeding, qualification spots, and training squad selection, tuned to their specific player pool rather than global rating inflation/deflation patterns.

4. Inclusion and fairness where FIDE access is limited

• In many places, players have few opportunities to play FIDE events due to cost, travel distance, or limited arbiters, so a pure FIDE-only system creates inequality between big-city players and those in smaller towns.
• A robust national list gives those underserved groups a fair way to gain recognition and track their level, instead of being "invisible" just because they cannot reach FIDE-rated tournaments.

5. Federation control, incentives, and community building

• With their own rating database, federations can build local incentives: awards for most active players, biggest rating gainers, and most active organizers, which help grow the national ecosystem, not just a handful of FIDE aspirants.
• National lists also strengthen federation membership and governance; ratings and event access often tie into membership, giving players a stake and a voice in how chess is run in their country.

6. Complement, not competitor, to FIDE

• National and FIDE ratings are usually independent but can be run in parallel: the same event can be both nationally and FIDE rated, or only one, depending on goals and practical constraints.
• This dual structure lets federations protect their grassroots while still aligning their top events and strongest players with the international system, combining global prestige with local relevance.

In short, FIDE ratings are essential for international comparison and titles, but national ratings are essential for broad participation, local fairness, and sustainable chess development inside each country. MCF rating is not the same as the previous cheaper National Rating but it's the best and closest we got.

I always hated chess-results final crosstables because it only gives the basic information like standings and total scores of the winners. I want to know who each player played with at a glance without clicking more links. 

Hence I came out with my own web app - "Catur Skor". It takes the results and let's you mouse over the name to see all the names of the opponent that particular player has played against and what is the result. 

mouse over reveals opponents and results

Ok, if you want, it's easier to just go to a sample page to see it in action here:

https://catur.org/skor/?fed=MAS&tnr=tnr1402077

To try out for yourself go to:

https://catur.org/skor

I am intrigued by a unique tournament seen on Facebook organised by a Philippines organiser. It functioned like a typical amateur chess tournament you find at weekends with the sole difference phones are used instead of physical chess boards and clocks.

This concept is similiar to EWC (Esport World Championship) for chess but that tourney used PCs and mouse and was high staked, high prize event.

The amateur version is less flamboyant and expensive instead relying on the player's own phones. One interesting aspect is there is great costs savings here. No rental of chess sets or chess clocks. You don't need many arbiters, one or two is enough to ensure rules are followed. You do not need pairing arbiters as systems from Chess.com, LiChess or PlayChess is used. 

You can argue this is no different from playing at home on your bed against online opponent. The difference here is organisers feel safer to put money or trophies because anti-cheating is built in and one requirement is that you are face to face with your opponent.

I don't play face-to-face chess (OTB) much nowadays but I would definitely turn up for such an "online face-to-face" tourney.

You can structure it like a swiss tournament or you can follow the eSport route like this:

Breakdown of this steps:

The core concept

No boards, no clocks, no arbiters walking the aisles - well maybe at least one arbiter to walk around to see no engines are used. Every player brings a phone. The platform — Lichess, Chess.com, or PlayChess — becomes the arbiter, the clock, the board, the pairing system, and the anti-cheat engine simultaneously. 

Online qualifier phase

Registration opens on the platform of choice. Players get assigned to a time-control bracket — bullet, blitz, or rapid — and the platform seeds them by their live ELO or rapid/blitz rating. Nobody needs to do anything manually. When a round starts, the server pairs players and pushes the game link directly to both phones. The players just tap "accept" and play.

Time control specifics matter a lot here:

Bullet (1+0 or 2+1) is the most spectator-friendly online but requires impeccable pre-move discipline on a phone screen — fat-finger errors become real tactical events. Blitz (3+2 or 5+0) is the sweet spot: fast enough to be exciting, slow enough for phone interfaces to be reliable. Rapid (10+0 or 15+10) is better suited to serious qualifiers or the later bracket stages where deliberate play matters more than speed.

Swiss rounds

Swiss is good here because it doesn't eliminate anyone early, maximises the number of games each player gets, and produces a clean ranked leaderboard at the end. Even weak players get to enjoy the rounds and not kicked out immediate. 

Tiebreaks like Sonneborn–Berger (SB) or Buchholz score, both calculated automatically by the platform, resolve ties. No arbiter needed. The platform posts live standings between rounds.

Anti-cheat is non-trivial in a phone-based format. Chess.com's anti-cheat engine and Lichess's Irwin/Kaladin systems flag suspicious move correlation with engine lines in real time. And that would be more than enough. Supplementary rules — all games must be played at the venue for the knockout stage, phones must be visible on camera, no earbud use, etc.

Qualifying for the live stage

After Swiss rounds conclude, the top 8 or top 16 players — depending on the event scale — receive invitations to the live stage event ala esports!

Live knockout stage

With a nice big monitor and chairs for spectators to watch - way better than the typical thing that happens at any local tournament where a huge group of people crowd around one table suffocating the players.

The spectator experience:

• The evaluation bar swings dramatically during tactical complications - of course monitors placed facing the spectators but behind the players.
  

I am posting it here first because I know such a format is easily picked up as the overhead is low and the rewards is high. When (not if) this becomes popular, I can say "See - I called it first" :)

 CaturVerse (found at catur.org) is Malaysia's Chess Gateway — a community-driven hub for chess enthusiasts in Malaysia and beyond. The word CaturVerse essentially means "Chess Universe".

Here's what the platform offers:

• CaturNews — the latest headlines from across the Malaysian chess circuit. 
• CaturCal — the definitive Malaysian chess tournament calendar and event dates. 
• CaturDB — a select database of games played in Malaysia
• CaturBlogs — expert strategies and curated Malaysian chess community writings. 
• CaturFestival — a hub for local chess festivals, large-scale news, and celebrations. 
• CaturAkademi — structured lessons, daily puzzles, and an official learning syllabus (available at academy.catur.org). 

It's essentially a one-stop platform for the Malaysian chess community — covering news, events, learning, game databases, and community blogging all in one place.

It's main purpose to exist:

Malaysia historically had fragmented chess information spread across social media, club pages, and separate organizers. CaturVerse appears to be aiming to unify those resources into a more modern and searchable infrastructure for players, coaches, organizers, and fans.