THOUGHTS OF A CHESS ADDICT

 I often wonder why myself.   Is it for personal achievement? Fulfiling parents' expectations? Trying out for DSA? Or just to get better. Whatever the reasons, do treat the NAG differently from the weekly events that you may play in.   A lot of time is invested - for young players with accompanying persons, many sacrifices are made to babysit you at the venue. Your time is also invested in playing the game. NAG is not a FUN event and should not be regarded as one. It is a testament of how well you currently are plus a measure of you against the rest of the cohort ( meaning those of your age plus those 1 year older). Therefore I would take the NAG as seriously as a mini " exam ". 9 test papers. 9 examiners, ie your opponents who will not stop asking your questions till you end the test. The results at the end of 9 rounds will decide who passes and who fails. Nobody walks into an exam expecting to fail. Yet why do players not treat their preparation seriously??...

  For those who have missed the series, I am doing a re-run of the Zoom Class for Improvers to start in January 2026. We can start only if we get a minimum of 6 students for the sessions. $100 to be paid upfront before the start, with presentation slides AND the video of the full session given to each participant. A sample clip for the first session on Visualisation. Interested ? Please drop me an email at jfan2003@gmail.com with the header " Zoom Class for Improvers" and we can take it from there. To reiterate the topics that I am going to cover, they are:  Date Topic 05/1/2026 Board Awareness and Board Vision 12/1/2026 What to watch on Youtube? 19/1/2026 How to study Chess Books 26/1/2026 Playing online for improvement   03/2/2026 Selecting an Opening that suits you

 So we've come to the final session tonight! The past 4 sessions was productive in getting the content across to the enthusiastic participants, with good questions on the related topics. Of the 4 sessions, most had challenges in visualisation which was not covered in most chess literature. It is always easy to read about it, watch videos to show how its done but nothing like practicing it regularly to see progress in the games. This effort takes a long time to master but the dividends are worth it. The next challenge came in on Playing Online for Improvement. When reviewing the games of the participants, most preferred to spend time on shorter time controls  probably owing to lack of time. However, it is better to accumulate spare time to solving puzzles if there isn't enough time to play a minimal 10 5 or 5 3 game. Anything less than that would not work towards chess improvement. Lastly I urge my participants to try and play regularly over the board. Committing 2 hours a week...

 Finally, with 6 registered for the class, we started at 8 pm Nov 3.  It was a good mix, with retirees, 3 enthusiasts and 1 student. We started on the topic of visualisation. Few spared time training for this aspect of chess but little do they know of the potential benefits in improving visualisation of the pieces on the board, especially when they perform 3-6 ply calculations. Having the ability to keep track of the changes per ply can be a daunting task but yet so critical as one mistake can alter the choice of candidate moves. No we are not learning visualisation for the purpose of playing blindfold chess. It is mainly to allow us to see into the future the result of our calculations and evaluating the right picture. As each ply is added the visual clarity of the board and pieces becomes unclear. After 4 ply it is even a challenge to note which piece has cleared a path or expose another piece to attack or threat.  What then are the building blocks of good visualising h...

*Note : I am reposting the 2013 article because the display game software was no longer working. At the recent Serangoon Inter-Team competition where I partnered my students, I had the chance to cross swords with several of the juniors from the other teams. As I do not get the chance to play in tournaments often, there are few opportunities to meet them over the board. Here are some of my first impressions of their play  (I hope the parents reading about their children do not take it too personally). My first encounter was round 2, playing White against Steffi Lim. She's played in many competitions, generally quite calm, but tends to give up easily when things do not work out her way. One of the most important qualities in a chess-player is to be resilient and always being resourceful out even when things do not work out. Only this way can one improve and succeed. My next junior opponent is Carwyn Yeo, an aggressive young man who has got ambition on his eyes. He concentrates wel...

 Finally I managed to get 6 persons expressing their interest to join the class! Can we have 2 more?? Though you can join in later and receive the content, wouldn't it be better to receive it real-time?