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Showing posts from June, 2012

GET A BETTER LOOK

This is my Middlegame Section (Advanced Players). Most of what I would need for IM or GM study is here. Here's my top players who never-made-it-to-World Champion section. Some Fischer books are stashed here because of overflow from my World Champion section. Portisch, Korchnoi,Nezhmetsinov, Stein, Gligoric and Larsen, along with the old masters like Rubinstein, Tarrasch, Reti etc. My Openings and Positional Play for 1200-2000 ELO section: These were my favourites when I was studying chess a lot. The opening books were kept to a minimal now, as I realised that they get outdated quite soon. So I chose mainly books that explain how to play the openings rather than the repertoire books (but of course, you need at least 1 good one for the openings you play). My favourites were Improve Your Chess Now, Purdy, Improve your Chess Results by Zak (Spassky's trainer) and the book next to it - Study Chess with Tal (by Koblenz, Tal's trainer).     Forgot about my Tactics and Endgames.....

MY CHESS BOOKS

This was taken after I had cleared my books off the shelves in preparation for their move. The aircon man is coming to lay down the piping. The collection spans from my childhood days when I bought my first book in 1976..it's about 400 plus books in there .. from world champion game collections, to middlegame books, lastly opening books. I had a few Russian and German books too from the days when I was in Europe. Now I am running out of room and will have to rely on ebooks. Now I give away those I hardly read in the annual Thomson Club Championships.

BACK IN 1985

It was pure serendipity that there was mention of a comment I read about Malaysia raising a new Junior Squad from the current bunch of promising juniors. Peter Long has already done it back in 1984-86, with the likes of  Gregory Vijendran, Chan Han Meng, Ng Ek Leong, Ng Ek Teong, Tan Hong Ghee,Adrian Wong and among the ladies, Audrey Wong and Seto Wai Leng. They were then known as the Kumpulan Remaja and did a blitzkrieg tour of Singapore, playing and beating some of the top Singapore juniors like Wong Foong Yin, Low Pe Yeow and so on. My story is centred from the above report made by then IM Leslie Leow in his regular chess column in the New Nation. The Cairnhill Chess Team consists mainly of players associated with Michael Siong who was the Chairman of the Club then. They have travelled  to the KL Labour Day tournament which was then held at the Wisma Belia.It was a strong team event, where amateur teams were formed from friends and associates (no Filipino professionals had ...