Ting Sie Bing is Malaysia's Master of the Game. His fortune is founded in developing local versions of established games.

Monopoly, where players wheel and deal using British pounds, invest in fashionable Mayfair, buy into Piccadilly and the British Electricity Board and commute via the tube at Marylbone and Fenchurch, is, he figures, "a leftover from the colonial era."

So he has introduced the Malaysian equivalent and calls it Saidina. The objective of the game is still "to develop your business power", but deals are made in Malaysian ringgit, prime property is in Kuala Lumpur's Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman and Penang's Penang Road and oil palm, rubber and pineapple plantations are going for $1,400 a piece.

Saidina is not the only game he has brought nearer to home. Notably, there's Sahibba, local version of Scrabble; Vocable and English-language word game; Digician a simple mathematical game; and Mind Reader a "mind reading game".

At 48, Mr. Ting is not exactly into his second childhood. It's just that he is still in the game whilst laughing all the way to the bank. His company Syarikat Permainan Malaysia (SPM), a sole proprietorship incorporated in 1976, produces over 40 games, and claims to be the "number one" supplier of game sets in the country.

His turnover in 1985 was valued at $650,000 and is expected to enter the million dollar league this year. Through contacts established through the Malaysian Export Trade Center of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, SPM now exports to Australia mahjong traveller sets, Mind Reader and Digician. His total exports to Singapore alone amounted to a quarter of a million dollars.

Formerly a training officer with the Ministry of Labour and Manpower, he sees his involvement in SPM as an extension of his old job because "basically I am training young minds"

The switch which sparked his interest in localising games was an innocuous encounter with a group of students who were playing Scrabble in Bahasa Malaysia. "Many people think because both languages use the same alphabet system, the same set can be used to play Bahasa. Just because badminton and tennis use racquets, it doesn't mean they are the same game. Many could not understand this logic for a long time."

This, he says, would create a lot of confusion because "the frequency of letters in each language is different." For example, there is a preponderence of the letter 'A' in Bahasa Malaysia.

His Malaysian version is Sahibba which he says, has been worked out according to the frequency of letters used in both languages. Its claim to a separate identity rests on the premise that Sahibba is conveniently "bilingual" and certain letters "common to both Bahasa and English" enjoy greater numerical superiority. For example, Sahibba has 24 A's (Scrabble - nine); four B's (two); and no Q, X and V (one, one and two respectively)

The Buy Malaysian campaign has proved lucrative for him. "The Government has done a great job. There has been a lot of awareness and sales have shot up by almost 50 per cent since the start of the campaign."

Mr. Ting endeavours have not been confined to board games. He has his hands into traditional games like congkak - "video games are good but anything so electronic has its side-effects. Traditional games have been proven through hundreds of years" - and has derived dwarf versions of the carom board (which he calls Morrom) and the billiard table.

His congkak sets are marketed in two styles, in meranti wood and plastic, flushing the game out of handicraft shops into department stores. Since late 1984 when he started marketing the game on a mass scale, he has sold about 2,000 sets and declares that "even in Singapore, they are reviving the game," a development which has cemented his conviction that "there's no game like a traditional game."

"The Rubik cube was beautiful, well-invented and exciting, but it died off. That's what happens to crazes." Now he is set on embarking on an ambitious social project - injecting a crossover of cultures through games. Instructions will be written in Bahasa Malaysia for games synonymous with the Chinese such as Chinese chess, while that for games like congkak will be translated into Mandarin.

He view games as "practical lessons" without which "a child would be learning the facts without the play. It is equivalent to gorging a child with too much rich food and not giving him enough exercise. His stomach becomes bloated. Knowledge is food to the mind and without the exercise found in games, the mind deteriorates." Mr. Ting joined SPM full-time in 1980, because he felt he could "provide not just the fun - that's just part of it - but the fun growing up in a more competitive society.

"I was drawn to this line because I specialise in teaching methodologies (while with the Ministry of Labour and Manpower, he won a UN fellowship to the UK to look into training methodologies). "Children have become more practical oriented through my games and it gives me tremendous satisfaction seeing people benefit from my business."

Right now his latest project, which will be launched soon, is a scaled-down billiard table, a quarter in size of the original, and which has been specially designed for children (and adult, if they insist). He draws his ideas, he says, through painstaking and lengthy research, which cuts into the time he spends with his family, including his 10 year old son and 17 year old daughter.

But they don't mind because it's just one of the games their father has to play to reach his millions. Besides, it also means they'll never run out of games to play.