THOUGHTS OF A CHESS ADDICT

The faces tell it all..prizes or none, on the students who took part in the Kickoff Tournament organised by SCF at the Toa Payoh Sports Centre on Sunday 11 January. 7 prize winners in the respective categories ! I want to congratulate Naython Tan on his superb performance today in the Cat 4G section, 2nd with 5.5 pts, as well as Soh Rui Yang though he finished on 5th by tiebreak. Good job boys! Andre and Ethan Chiam started their first tournament and I'm so proud of them after they watched Sue Lyn in action and learnt so much about taking their time to record their games and think. Ethan managed to record till move 35 and he was unexpectedly not crying over his loss. They have grown to learn how to deal with losses and I'm sure they will look forward to playing their next tournament. I Shiuo scored 4 pts while Jasper managed 2.5 pts. I Shiuan and Sue Lyn are in Cat 2 and clearly the strength of the participants meant extra effort to win every game. Both lost against the Champio...

I've got several of my students to take part in this, with no expectations as I wanted them to enjoy playing after such a long break from chess because of the exams. In all, the stronger students did not disappoint, while others played to enjoy themselves in spite of the mistakes. Shi Hao's game against the winner of the Open, Ashwin, was rather close from the opening to the middlegame. He had surprised Ashwin with the Danish Gambit which was declined. Generally when a player declines  a gambit, it implies a psychological victory to the gambiteer but probably the more prudent choice when one is not prepared to enter the battle a pawn up. I viewed the game vaguely where White was training his heavy pieces on Black, thought it went well but was told later that Shi Hao lost.  After a day's battle, Visakan came in 4th with 6/7 pts.    Joshua was very much himself, playing with his hands rather than his eyes on the board, made the usual mistakes but won some games against...

Most children I know love to sign up and enter every tournament they can participate in, but the results they obtain do not always measure up to their enthusiasm. Sometimes we need to understand what is meant by " LESS IS MORE ". To put it simply, why play 5 tournaments and end up getting 50% score ? Why not prepare and play 2 good tournaments and end up top 5 placing? Even grandmasters do not go past 60 games A YEAR. They spent the rest of the year PREPARING . So how does one PREPARE?  Rather than reproduce the same text, why not read it for yourself here However, I must qualify some of Botvinnik's comments - they are meant for top players, not club players.   " I study games played by my rivals during the forthcoming competition "    You can only do that if you are playing in a round-robin tournament, where everyone meets everyone. This approach is not practicable in a Swiss system tournament, where your opponents vary. But then, if you are observant enou...