Hamid Majid has been appointed as the Chief Arbiter for the upcoming World Chess Championship match between Ding Liren, the reigning champion from China, and Gukesh Dommaraju, the challenger from India.

This remarkable accomplishment deserves our heartfelt congratulations. Since the 1980s, Hamid has been a stalwart in the chess community, organizing both local and international tournaments. Of course not to mention his 19 years of running one of the biggest chess festival in Asia - the Malaysian Chess Festival. 

For me, I met Hamid in 1999 when I just started my chess blog. Back then the basic thing was to get local chess results aand pictures to post. It wasn't easy. There were no chess-results.com or even chess websites !! So my "please sir can I have the chess results" was always graciously answered by Hamid.

It may be an easy ask but many local organisers weren't as kind. We got chased out of the tournament hall once for copying the chess results on paper because our credentials as "bloggers" did not mean anything at that time (and I still it still means nothing todaay :) )

Anyway in later years Hamid was alwaays helpful when this irritating blogger would always ask for the same thing - results. He would tell his arbiters "Give him what he wants".

Later I got invited to be part of the team to handle the tournament website starting from the 2nd Malaysian Open and have been part of the "team" ever since. I was impressed with how Hamid people handling especially when he only sometimes gets an experienced team. Things go wrong but the way he handled it was exceptional. 

So yes, I think they've chosen the perfect man for the World Chess Championship 2024!