10th Johor International Chess Open
By Edwin Lam Choong Wai – photos provided by the Johor Chess Association (JCA)
GM Iniyan Panneerselvam winning the last contest 11 months ago! | Photo: Azri Hohad
India’s grandmaster Iniyan Panneerselvam dominated the 9th Johor International Chess Open earlier this year with an 8.5 points out of 9 rounds performance (click here for a full report) and became just the third Indian chess player to win this annual contest. Indian IM Raahul VS was in second place – 1.5 points behind!
In less than two weeks, the 10th edition of this long-standing chess festival in this Southeast Asian city of Johor Bahru bordering Singapore will take place starting from the 25th of December until the last day of this year before we all welcome 2026!
The Johor International Chess Open
Organised by the Johor Chess Association (JCA), this edition will again be played at the Fairview International School and guess who is back in the hunt again this time? Raahul is returning to compete, this time as a GM! Last month the 22-year-old won the 6th ASEAN Individual Open and got his full grandmaster title.
Raahul VS is India’s 91st grandmaster | Photo: Shahid Ahmed
Fresh off that victory, Raahul is obviously on a high and is chasing further glory! Ranked second behind grandmaster Andrey Gorovets of the Belarus (click here for the latest registered players for this competition), can Raahul take the cake this time around? Or, will the ‘handful’ of Vietnamese GMs and Indonesian IMs prove too much for him? We will see how the proceedings go when the battle begins on Boxing Day!
Details of the contest
The prospectus for the event can be found here. This 9-round Swiss event with the time control of 90+30 has an Open section for the higher rated players and a Challengers’ section. The Open section has a total prize fund of Malaysian Ringgit 32,650, while the Challengers’ section comes with prizes totalling Malaysian Ringgit 7,800. Combining all prize monies make this one of the most lucrative there are out there this year! As encouragements for the teens and kids, there are special age-group medals for them in the Challengers’ edition!
Grandmasters rated 2400 and above are invited to play for free in this competition as well as being allocated complimentary single room accommodation. International Masters rated 2300 and above can play free of charge with twin sharing accommodation. Other entrants who are members of JCA gets discounted entry fee.
The closing date for registration is this Saturday, 20th December 2025. Click here to register your interest right away!
Epilogue
The task for promoting this Johor International Chess Open through writings and words of mouth had been very masterfully done by the late FM FT IA Peter Long in the past few years. Peter had been a frequent contributor to ChessBase India and occasionally wrote about his favourite subject – chess training – on Chessbase.com.
This chess player, administrator, promoter, organiser and honoured trainer, who was very close to the JCA administration, passed away around about eight months ago. He would be sorely missed by everyone in JCA and by the players and officials who had known him. May he rest in peace.
The late Peter Long (yellow shirt) with officials of JCA and young chess talents of Johor
