Boon Lay CC Chinese Chess club did not encourage our players to play for another team. On the other hand, we also did not strongly enforce the rule of them not to play for another team as we believe it is the player's freedom to decide for himself.
As the players who played for 2 diferent teams are youth players. They still do not have the idea of TEAM and CLUB embedded strongly in them yet. To them, they just want to play chess, wherever there are opportunities. Well, maybe it's not gd for team and club policies. But if we step back and look from a wider perspective, what they are doing is good for the development of chess in Singapore. This is because they will be the next batch of potential players to represent Singapore and to bring chinese chess to a higher level. Personally, as much as I do not like them representing other teams, I feel bad in hampering their progress as well.
What is causing this problem might be that there are too few chess competition and opportunities in Singapore for these young players to play serious chess. This causes them to find ways and means to play more Chess competition whenever possible.
Also, these young players are not the top players in Singapore. Thus, I do not believe the team that they played for are trying to win with them.
As for your issue of good foreign players, it is a hotly debatable one. My own feeling is that inviting them over gives the other Singaporeans from other teams the opportunities to play with these top players for free. I do see anything bad about it. Well, there are of course more to be considered than to accept this simplistic view.
But maybe it is time we should look beyond the strict confinements of the idea of a TEAM and CLUB to consider that for the greater good of Chinese Chess development in Singapore.
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