THOUGHTS OF A CHESS ADDICT

Most of the students were inactive in the 4th quarter, so here's the ones registered changes at the Jan 2012 rating list: With the exception of Hui Ling (who will undoubtedly see a jump when her rating is calculated in March thanks to her good performance at the last tournament), the rest registered healthy increases, notably Shi Hao's 124 pt increase thanks to his consistently good performance throughout the Queenstown and Rating Tournaments in Dec. Mitchell's Queenstown performance netted him 71 pts. while Visakan got his 49 pts from the Children's Day tournament. Same goes for Samuel at the last Children's Day tournament. I am heartened by their scores and hope that they will keep this up at the tournaments this year.

Shi Hao garnered points from the unrated players like himself but lost against the rated Indians and a very strong Chinese Zhou Xiangheng. 3 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses is a satisfactory result for his first International outing. Though 2 of the games could have been saved if he had studied the opening more and played slower in the first 10 moves, as he lost pieces due to simple tactics and was not familiar with the lines he played. Hui Ling was the surprise of the group, getting 5.5 / 9. She even managed to win against Breasha Gupta of India  Though she scored only 0.5 from the first 2 days, she steeled herself to coast a winning streak of 5 wins till round 8. At the last game, she fell to an attack by Malaysia's Teh De Zen and lost. In spite of that, she had the best score out of my 6 students taking part. Her result came ahead of several Junior Squad trainees and for that, she should rightfully be very proud of her successful first International outing. Though he managed a smile ...

The tournament has 2 sections, the Open for those 1601 and above and the Novice Section for those rated 1600 and under. Shi Hao and Mitchell took part, with Shi Hao ending on 3.5 and Mitchell on 4.5. He was placed 23rd in the field of 96 players, beating Foo Kai En in the last round who's rated 1392. He should get about 30 rating pts from this tournament. What matters to me is not so much just the results but tbe valuable lessons one learns during the course of the seven games. When Mitchell started off his first game, he lost it in about 20 minutes. What he was not aware of is the time management of his game which needs a little adjustment. He was working out 1 variation which he saw and did not try to see other moves which could be better. After explaining to him that the purpose of spending time was to first SELECT the candidate moves, evaluate the resultant position of EACH candidate move and then picking the best of the lot. Hence the need to take one's time to do this, es...

Here's the report of the performance of my students who participated at the recent National Inter-Schools at Rulang Primary School. 3 of them achieved perfect scores, while the rest scored 4 and above. What more can I ask? Well done boys and girls! Perfect score achievers get a present as promised. PERFECT SCORES       THE 4 & ABOVE POINTERS        

7 students took part in the just concluded Queenstown Age-Group with varying results. There were 2 prize winners, Nicholas Low who was 5th in the U10 and Matthew Sim who was 4th. The Primary Section was won by Ashvin Sivakumar while Ting JinYao won the Secondary Section.  WIth my prize-winning students Both got 4/7 pts. Dan Peng lost his last game to finish at 4/7, which is already great improvement considering that he did only 2.5pts at the National Schools Individual in March. I was pleasantly surprised when my first-time participant student T  had Gregory Loh on the ropes on her first major chess game! She was totally winning but stalemated. T showed great composure, taking her time and diligently followed my instructions in recording her moves and looking at threats. She certainly has the temperament for chess if she pursues it with more fervour.  For those who did not achieve the desired 4pts, they would need to examine the games to reflect on the typical mistakes ...