A Celebration of Family, Friends, and Colleagues at the Indonesia Chess Museum
There are few chess museums in various countries - Iceland, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, Turkiye and now in Indonesia. Museum Catur Indonesia (Indonesia Chess Museum) was soft launched on 26th February 2025. Who are the people who made it happen? Peter Long, who was present at this event, shares everything about it with information and attractive photos. It is located together with Cafe Tutur at the Headquarters of the Utut Adianto Chess School (SCUA) in Bekasi, Indonesia, a FIDE Tier 1 Academy also founded by Eka Putra Wirya. Photos: FM FT IA Peter Long
The soft launch of the Indonesia Chess Museum (ICM) on 26th February 2025 was indeed a celebration of family, friends, and colleagues of Eka Putra Wirja.
ICM is of course located together with Cafe Tutur at the Headquarters of the Utut Adianto Chess School (SCUA) in Bekasi, a FIDE Tier 1 Academy also founded by Eka.
Who is Eka Putra Wirja?
To start with, one of the worst kept secrets of the Indonesian chess success of the last three decades, as he is recognized together with Senator GM Utut Adianto, Indonesia’s greatest ever player, as either the first or second of the two main pillars of a trio that includes FST Kristianus Liem.
In a long ranging interview conducted with the official opening of ICM, we learned Eka’s story, and indeed how this might be the final piece of a strategic vision which begun in 1990.
Remarkably, with family together with hundreds of friends and chess colleagues present, a special Catholic Mass was held to both inaugurate and bless the ICM and Cafe Tutur premises.
Tributes then followed, from a member of SCUA management, this writer considered an old friend, a media representative, followed by the keynote address by Eka, after which came the speech and official opening by GM Adianto, also the President of the All Indonesian Chess Federation (PERCASI), and who had rushed back from official government work in China.
Media and guests then were taken through a guided tour before adjourning to lunch, and entertainment by a live band helmed by a former junior chess champion where many, including Eka joined the performances, while concurrently two clock simultaneous exhibitions took place with some of the best Indonesian young talent took on the two GM winners of the recently concluded Indonesia GM & IM Tournaments.
Eka was in his youth a promising young talent but the responsibilities of being the oldest son in a business family demanded he gave up his chess ambition, at least that of becoming a grandmaster. And yet, when visiting the FIDE World Championship Match in Singapore last year, he was still strong enough to beat former world women chess champion GM Xie Jun in a simultaneous exhibition.
Instead Eka decided to continue to support chess in Indonesia as both an official and as a patron, starting with leading the Indonesian team to the Manila Olympiad in 1990.
He hooked up with a player he recognized as having exceptional talent, and convinced him to quit his job to take up chess full time and did exactly the same to a journalist who covered and wrote about chess with the same passion he had.
Yes, the soon to become the three pillars of Indonesian chess was beginning to take shape.
Adianto of course went on to be the poster boy of Indonesian chess, a top twenty grandmaster, who even when not playing for over ten years and in his 50’s could still fill in on board one for a weaken Indonesian team at the Baku Olympiad and make an unbeaten 5/6 score.
Liem on the other hand took the operating managing role at SCUA, initially started as Enerpac Chess School.
It is without exaggeration that Eka and his two friends love chess and Indonesia more than anything, and that they were instrumental for every Indonesian success in the last ten years, every World and Asian Cadet, Schools, Youth, and Junior champion, for every grandmaster, international master, women grandmaster and international women grandmaster.
Eka is even more proud that the success of SCUA together with the many events organized and sponsorship of national players and teams to international competitions has lifted many chess players out of abject poverty and to middle and even upper middle class lives and this is the simple explanation for the hundred from the chess community who came to the ICM soft opening.
With ICM, something that no other Asian country has yet to see, Indonesian chess now has a showcase of both the history and achievements of their champions, and to serve as an inspiration to those to come after.
But it also recognizes the contributions of individuals and corporations who has given so much to Indonesian chess, and offers a compelling reason for sponsors to come onboard.
And finally, it positions chess in education, clearly not only articulating the benefits of chess to their young, but in collaboration with SCUA, also a means for implementation of schools and talent development programs.
With ICM, Eka has perhaps put in the last piece of the jigsaw that has long been his vision for chess in Indonesia together with old and like minded friends Adianto and Liem.
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