THOUGHTS OF A CHESS ADDICT

Here's the results for the Toa Payoh West CC Tournament  Under 13  Here    Under 7   Here     Under 8  Here    Under 9  Here                     and of course,  the OPEN is already published here                

We've started the first of our 8 training days for the coming Singapore International Youth Tournament. It lasts 4 hours per session (designed to stretch the players to cope with the first 4 hours of play). Quite a fair bit done with vision drills, followed by solving tons of 2-3 move tactics. I'm harnessing the wisdom of Michael De La Maza and Dan Heisman, thanks to their insights I've incorporated their advice on working on chess-playing ability rather than stuffing more chess knowledge at this point. Training Day 2 promises to be gruelling, with more puzzles, more intense visualisation tasks ahead. Sorry but there will be no photos as the competitors's names and faces are confidential at this point. Players who have done well were rewarded with a good bowl of lotus root soup with rice plus kit kat too between breaks. Not a dull moment !

Lately there was talk of a group of parents wanting to appeal to the MOE for chess to recognise as an official sport. Though I commend the noble effort of the group, some doubts linger in my mind: How does having more children playing chess raise the stature of the game here in Singapore? How does it increase the popularity of the game here? Will chess be as popular as that in Indonesia, India and other countries? Here is my opinion. Throughout the countries that are promoting chess from age 6 onwards, we have several institutions like Chess-in-the-Schools program, the Susan Polgar academy in the US, while in the UK Michael Basman and Malcolm Pein also championed the Chess in Schools & Communities project . Lately we have Kasparov starting Chess for Schools in the EU. The Scholastic chess ( chess in primary and secondary school) model is being seen as the most likely model to propagate chess interest amongst the populace. Sadly, the results of these noble efforts do not commensura...

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...

School's out pretty soon, so it's time to revisit the tournaments that will be in place for November and December. There's 25minute rapid chess and longer time controls of 2 hrs per game or more, plenty to choose from. I am broadcasting mainly those tournaments which are not organised by the SCF. For SCF tournaments, please goto  the SCF   for all the Upcoming Events. TOA PAYOH WEST CC  NOVEMBER 20 Round 1 starts 930am. There are 3 sections, A1 Junior Under 13 yrs, A2 Junior Under 10yrs, and Open (no age limit). Cash prizes and trophies awarded for Sections A1 and Open, trophies only for A2.  Lunch will be provided for Junior Sections A1 and A2 only . The entry form can be downloaded here   CAIRNHILL CHESS FESTIVAL 2011 DECEMBER 3-4 There are again 3 Sections, Open (No age limit), Major (16 yrs and under) and Minor ( 12 yrs and under). The Open and Major Sections are played in 45 minutes per side, thus over 2 days while the Minor is a one-day tournament played ...

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...