This is when the legendary Japfa Chess Festival began. Following the successful chess events that they held in the past, Japfa Comfeed Indonesia decided to hold a giant chess event. They dubbed it as a festival rather than a tournament and they really meant it. The inaugural Japfa Festival broke the record as the chess event with the most participants in Indonesia. It had 556 players involved. As a comparison, the 2002 National Championship at Palembang had ‘only’ 424 players.
The players were distributed in many categories: masters, non masters, age groups, and the unique one, celebrities. The most prestigious category was certainly the masters. It was attended by 4 GMs, 5 IMs, 6 FMs, and other players with total 200 players altogether. Practically all Indonesian leading players, except GM Utut Adianto, participated.
The battle for the championship in the masters category went fiercely. In the end no less than 4 players, GM Edhi Handoko, IM Dede Lioe, GM Cerdas Barus, and FM Hamdani Rudin, scored the same VP, 7.5. Edhi was declared as the champion based on the progressive scores tiebreak.