Celebrating Professor Lim Kok Ann's legacy

Today would have been the late Professor Lim Kok Ann's one hundred and sixth birthday. He is recognized as the father of Singapore Chess and his manifold contributions to developing and popularizing Singapore Chess is immeasurable.

In 2018, the QCD Professor Lim Kok Ann GM event was held and it was eventually completed with Kevin Goh Wei Ming (now CEO of Singapore Chess Federation) and Gong Qianyun making their final GM and WGM norms respectively. During the opening ceremony, the following slides were shown to the attendees (virtually a who's who of Singapore chess over 5 decades or so). 

Lim Kok Ann was born and lived in Emerald Hill Road in his early years.  He was however brought up in the household of his grandfather, the illustrious Dr Lim Boon Keng in Amoy China – Dr Lim Boon Keng was then the President of the Amoy University. Dr Lim Boon Keng wore many hats as we all know, was a medical doctor, legislator, scholar, educator, entrepreneur, community leader, social reformer and philanthropist.

Lim Kok Ann couldn’t speak a word of English when he was 7 years old but that didn’t stop him from winning the first Seow Poh Leng medal for the top ACS student (given to the best O Level students). He also received the prestigious Queen’s Scholarship in 1938 like his grandfather who achieved the feat in 1887.

Prof married Rosie Seow (a great granddaughter of Tan Tok Seng and daughter of Seow Poh Leng) in 1942. She shared his passion for the arts and was an accomplished actress.

Prof Lim had an illustrious medical career as can be seen from the timeline. A news report quoted him as ‘a teacher who could make the subject clear, interesting and relevant to their needs’. He progressed from tutor to lecturer and eventually became the Dean of Medicine as well as a WHO advisor.  He was also renowned as a Snooker whiz and of course, chess champion in the University.

The isolation of the Asian flu virus was an extremely significant event in Prof’s illustrious professional career.  Prof however, gave full credit to all those who worked on his team as well as the health officer who drew his attention to the Asian Flu when it broke out.

Prof started chess in schools with his Bartley system of chess training and not surprisingly, the first school he taught was Bartley Secondary in 1955 where his wife was a school teacher then. Through Prof’s tireless promotion, it moved to other schools and in good time, chess found its place in Singapore schools as an extra-curricular activity

Prof and his contemporaries, some of whom are present today, moved on to establish chess in the Community centres, starting with Kreta Ayer CC. Gradually, chess found its place in CCs such as Joo Chiat, MacPherson, Cairnhill, Kampung Kapor, Queenstown, Buona Vista, Kuo Chuan, Marine Parade, Bukit Panjang, Tiong  Bahru and Toa Payoh.

He also promoted chess on the road tirelessly, going to schools, community centres, national libraries, country clubs and hotels  to give talks, training games, lessons and game demonstrations.

He wrote hundreds of chess articles in the Straits times, the New Nation, The Singapore Free Press, sometimes to raise funds for tournaments, chess tours or simply to send a promising team or junior abroad to get international competition exposure.

Of course, tournament reports and results were chronicled. Prof also celebrated Singapore’s chess successes to the nation, especially when Tan Lian Ann came in 2nd in an Australian international open and when he became an international master and when Terence Wong came in 2nd in the World Cadets.

Prof stirred up chess interest with witty, catchy headlines for his articles…The left one has Prof indicating school chess champions get paid for neglecting their studies for chess. An article on Blind chess players (he went to the Singapore School for the Blind to teach them) was titled “These chess players do not observe ‘Touch Move’ rule, and instead of writing that our juniors are getting stronger, he chose to write there were fewer rabbits in schools today….

You can also see that Prof has taught chess in this very location…which was then known as the Chinese YMCA in 1946 and in 1974, it was renamed Metropolitan YMCA. So you can see how appropriate this place is for a QCD-Prof Lim Kok Ann Grandmasters event.

Prof also used his columnist status to teach chess in a “Learn Chess” series spanning 60 weekly lessons and over two years.

He also covered many chess interest articles from human chess pieces, postal chess, chess greats such as Fischer, Keres, Spassky, Karpov and even topics such as Sportsmanship and Hustling in chess.

Prof also started the Singapore Chess Bulletin with his chess-friends in 1963, and in every issue a different colour scheme and this magazine circulated for more than 15 years.

Apart from chess analysis, game scores, tournament results and rating lists, Prof’s sense of humour can be seen in the magazine advertisements. For example, if you want to remain an ayam (or chicken) don’t read Australia’s Chess World. To play like the Latvian chess wizard Tal, use Tiger Balm. And…Invest in Chung Khiaw Bank as its cheques are as reliable as Tan Lian Ann’s chess checks.

Of course Prof was no slouch at chess, winning the National championships 3 times. He took the title in the first ever event in 1949 and won it again in 1960 and as you can see in the right, he took the title again in 1968. In his later years, he also took the British Veteran Champion title twice and right into his 70s, he could hold his own against  elo 2000+ level players.

Even right into his 70s, he could play at 2000+ ELO level. In the above game against a future national champion when he was 74, he unleashed a flank pawn sacrifice to wreck White’s centre, then punted an e4-clearance sacrifice to get an e5-knight outpost before sending all his troops to the kingside for the kill.

Prof also represented Singapore in 5 Chess Olympiads though he stood out in Nice as a non-playing 2nd reserve.

Prof nurtured, sponsored, chaperoned, gave training materials, advised and played training matches with many young juniors and a number of them have gone on to attain titles. If the players cannot attend go to the training centres, he will simply go to their homes armed with his sets and books. More often than not, he will just fund their trips (and their parents’) to overseas events from his own pocket,. Among them are IM Tan Lian Ann, GM Wong Meng Kong, FM Jeremy Lim, IM Hsu Li Yang, IM Leslie Leow, WFM Yip Fong Ling, NM Pang Kwok Leong, FM Mark Chan, GM Goh Wei Ming just to name a few of the hundreds….

In local terms, we can call Prof Lim’s a ‘pao-kah-leow’ type in  running a local chess tournament of the 50s. A Straits times article celebrating his 60 birthday noted …Prof Lim personally sent out the announcements, drew up the pairings, carried all the chess sets, clocks and score sheets to the venue.

Then, often helped by his wife and children, he arranged chairs and tables and told everyone where to sit, explained the rules, rang the starting and closing bells, answered all the queries, settled the disputes, collated the results, handed out all the prizes, and wrote the reports.

Incidentally, we got an email from his daughter, our Guest of Honour, Ms Stella Kon who reminisced about the very same thing in her email to us! Methinks she can recall so well because she helped Prof to run the show back then.

In the 1970s, Prof started to extend his chess services beyond Singapore and Malaysia. Most significant of his assignments can be seen from this slide. He was FIDE Zone 10 President in the 1970s, appointed Chief Juror in the infamous Karpov vs Korchnoi Battle of Baguio World Championships match, served as FIDE General secretary in the 80s, and was appointed the Chief Arbiter of the 1992 Manila Chess Olympiad, whom many feel is the best chess Olympiad ever organized.

According to his daughter Stella, Prof had raised millions of dollars for Singapore chess. The funds came from firstly his grandfather Lim Boon Keng in the early years. Subsequently, Singapore’s chess funds were garnered through Prof’s contacts such as ST Lee, Datuk Tan Chin Tuan, Lien Yin Chow (OUB), Dato Aw Cheng Chye, Dato Robin Loh.

Big brand names such as Yuen Hwa (HICEE), National (Mashushita), Green Spot, Chunk Khiau Bank, Yeo Hiap Seng and Eu Aun Tong (the Tiger Balm oil makers) were featured in Singapore’s chess magazines, bulletins, campaign pamphlets.

It is our hope that the chess fraternity will, just as in this event, contribute to chess excellence by putting aside funds for future Invitational Master and Grandmaster events.

Apart from the very generous donation from the Lim family to continue his chess legacy of helping Singapore’s promising young masters for the QCD LKA event,  Prof’s grandson, Bernard Carleton Lim has initiated a PUBXCHESS meetup for chessers interested in a pint or two, networking and hard fought blitz matches.

Now Carleton is an operations executive in the Singapore Chess Federation, continuing his grandfather’s legacy in serving Singapore chess.

It is interesting that in an oral interview Professor Lim gave on 30/12/1992 at the Oral History Centre (Singapore), he referenced IM Hsu Li Yang as he described ". For instance, our players—you might have read recently… young man called Hsu Li Yang who was—become playing abroad, get very good results. He is—his name appears in world list, you know". Today, Professor Dr Hsu (IM), followed in Prof Lim's footsteps by becoming the president of the Singapore Chess Federation.  An entity he mentioned in the interview is Boon Lay Primary School. Prof mentioned "So my main interest now is to—in chess—is to do some teaching for the young kids in the schools; at the moment I'm coaching two schools mainly, other schools I also try, but only two I'm sticking to. Two or three schools—Raffles Girls' School, and Boon Lay Primary school, and Raffles Institution. Three schools. So two afternoons and one morning I go there. And a small class about from ten or twenty little kids. Boon Lay Primary School is very good. Of course they were already very good before I started to coach them, but they have consistently won the age groups for under 10, under 12, under 14—under 10 and under 12. Because their teacher at Boon Lay school is very enthusiastic and spends a lot of time with them". The CEO of the Singapore chess federation GM Kevin Goh Wei Ming hails from Boon Lay Primary School and had in interviews acknowledged Prof's contribution to his chess successes. 

Thank you for reading!