1971.??.??-?. Round Robin 13 rounds. 13 players. NM titles: Frans Turalakey, Ridwan Gozali.
The old guard was back. It was too early to write off a veteran Arovah Bachtiar although he had been humbled in the last two National Chess Championships by his younger counterpart, IM Ardiansyah. Arovah won the National Championship crown for the fourth time. His first was almost two decades ago in 1953, a model of a consistency that was hard to match.
The reigning champion Ardiansyah saved some honors by placing himself at second, half a point adrift from Arovah. But the result certainly wasn’t good enough for the best player in Indonesia. Ardiansyah was quite young (20-year old). More importantly he didn’t face stronger oppositions compared to the previous National Championships. The last year National Championship was even more difficult to win with in-form Eddy Rusli and Kuntoro Bessaria playing. What happened to Ardiansyah?
Percasi (All Indonesia Chess Federation) awarded the National Master title to the big five. Arovah, Ardiansyah, and Jacobus had already been titled players, so the honor went to Frans Turalakey and Ridwan Gozali.
FIDE officially published the Elo rating list for the first time on January 1st that year. Indonesia had four players on the list. Three players were competing in the event. The other was IM Max Arie Wotulo at 2330. Take a look at Arovah’s Elo of 2400. Back then only a handful of players in Asia-Pacific that had a higher Elo.