To my understanding, these are the key factors before politics really plays a part:

1. Which club is willing to organize such a tournament? Usually clubs wish their own teams to have chances to get a place - this is indeed how the ranked + unranked system was invented, for it created more uncertainty and thus more chances for everyone. Strongest clubs might be interested, but this is obviously not their 1st choice of tournament type - This might not mean the club not supporting chess, but rather how best they can get the sponsors interested.

2. Who has the energy to organize such an event? In fact a club needs someone who's experienced and quite free to organize big events. I've seen some such persons stepping out of the chess circle, Right now maybe the 2 clubs with best chance to do so are White Sands and Bishan. Hopefully later we can see more.

3. Where's the sponsorship? This one I don't need to elaborate.

4. What is the venue? That should be a place easy to reach, best near MRT. Besides, a club needs to occupy the hall or room for a few days and must not be disturbed by other CC activities. This is much easier comparing to above 3 but still a difficulty for some clubs.

5. Support from the CC. When a few MPs are no longer in the position, we are actually now facing an issue of getting less support from the CC. This could be a temporary issue though, for I believe we can get more MPs to involve in the next years.

Well if you want to call all these politics, you can. To me, I'd rather call them the reality. Politics are those things some people do for their own sake while they pretend to represent the whole club.

Not really, because people might be willing to "donate" a certain amount of money in total within a period, say, in 1 year. Therefore if you put too much resources into 1 event, you might have the rest affected. For example, in year 2000, Singapore had a lot of chess events and many of them gave high cash prizes. In year 2001 the circle became much more quiet, probably even more quiet than 1997. Afterward it became worse and worse with the economy until about 2005.

In the recent few years we can see many tournaments had the cash prizes cut short, partly due to funding issues. Sadly to say, the reason why more team tournaments instead of individual tournaments are organized is mainly due to the ratio of funding vs number of participants.

However on the other hand, we can see that organizing a tournament might not need that much money, regardless whether it's a team or individual one, even though every winner wishes the figure to increase. :) The more important thing is still whether there are clubs or people willing to organize popular tournaments and benefit more players.

在培养新秀方面碧山象棋会的成就是有目共睹的。我印象最深的一项是当初碧山坚持主办了几届小学生团体赛，在当时对避免象棋界年龄断层进一步扩大在实质上起了很积极的作用。希望各个有能力的棋会再接再励。

说限制有级棋手参赛是因为无级棋手怕输，虽是托词，未免过分。“怕输”本意是对的，就是怕得高分的机会不多，但怕的不是“输”，而是名次的排列。即使是A组甚至于中国的甲级联赛，争分和保本仍然是棋赛的主流。能完全不计名次的棋手实在是凤毛麟角。

窃以为办无级棋手的比赛，无可厚非，因为无级棋手可以有更多的机会。无级中的强手，也可以在这些比赛中培养信心，为升级做好准备。无级强手如果在无级中太强，久而久之，也会厌烦无级的比赛，转而争取级别吧。前面的升级了，也可以鼓励中层的不断进取，夺取名次。办无级比赛真正的问题是，纯粹有级棋手参加的，或者有、无级棋手混合的比赛，相比之下，有减少的趋势。

Maybe there are not too few sponsors, but if we try to figure out the reason why number of them appears to decrease, that's politics. On the other hand, this is in fact not the determining factor. The more important thing, as what I believe SIXGA trying to do, is to gain more recognition of the Singapore Sports Council. When Xiangqi participated in the Asian Indoor Games at Macau last year and won 3 medals (no criticism on you. You played in the toughest group and you contributed equally many efforts), certainly it helps, but we still have a long way to go. If Xiangqi is sponsored by the country, you probably don't need to worry about many things like now.

I never mean getting medals is the only way to get more government support. There should be various ways to convince them about the importance to maintain Xiangqi as a traditional game. As for the medals,mabye it's lucky last year (or maybe many people would think so :P), but anyway last year you guys have won 1/3 - 1/2 of the total medals SG team got if I am not wrong. In the future just do your best, 1/5 would be more than sufficient. :P The more the better though. The only thing I worry is how many countries will continue to favourite in sending Xiangqi team for next competitions, since most people are going for medals.