THOUGHTS OF A CHESS ADDICT

1981 It was the year when ACS was dominating the InterSchool Team chess scene the last time in the 80's in the Under 18's. RI's Under 16 team won the National School's Team Championship U16 trophy, the U14s also did well. From 1982 till 1988, RI then swept the top honours in the National Junior and School Team Championships each year, with the exception in 1985 when CJC took the Under 18. Another photo from 1984: What was the secret? The mentorship that Soh Kok Hong (on extreme left) and I (6th from right) provided, coming back to our Grange Road RI every Saturday afternoon in helping with the training of the boys during these years that made the difference. The bond between us and the boys gave them the necessary confidence to do their best and return with the titles. One of my methods was to have the boys focus their games onto an empty chessboard and I would throw a book in the air that will hit the floor with a loud thud. The student that got distracted would be ...

I had a chat with a former student of mine, who's very passionate about chess. He lamented that he was not getting his results in spite of spending a lot of time playing chess, that his playing strength was stagnating. Many years ago, it happened to me as well. I could not get past players 150 rating points above me. I could not figure out what seemed to be wrong. My routine of solving problems, reading as many books as I can get my hands on,playing in tournaments did not yield any breakthrough. I lost thread of the game especially in the late middlegame and endgame. It took a lot of soul-searching to decide what was wrong. In the 80's I was mildly teased by stronger players, including IM Tan Lian Ann, that I was the best player in Singapore for the first 20 moves (mainly because of my opening knowledge). I realised that he was hinting that my chess fundamentals was not well laid and that I should review them first before anything else. Following the advice, I stopped reading o...