THOUGHTS OF A CHESS ADDICT

The annual Merdeka Team Tournament in KL marks the largest team competition in ASEAN region, with participating countries from ASEAN as well as the competitiors who have taken part in the Malaysian Open. Singapore has been sending teams to this event, notably present were the players from Chess-Kidz and 2 other teams, QY+3, (all NUS team members) plus IM Chan Peng Kong who stayed on to play for Brian Jones's team. AMS Bolih contained 2 Singaporeans, Jimmy Ng and Lee Wang Sheng (who may be Australian by now).  My visit to the  Festival this year was fruitful in many ways, with some observations and lessons that we can draw from should we in Singapore attempt such a feat. SCALE It is undoubtedly true that without scale of participation, no media would want to cover such an event. The latest Merdeka Team Tournament held last week attracted 473 players, with 8 GMs, 11 IMs and 12 FMs in the fold. For such a tournament to be held in Singapore, a decent hall the size of the wedding b...

On 2 August, a landmark meeting was convened between the SCF and interested parties to discuss key pressing issues regarding the popularity of chess in Singapore and its continued survival. Led by VP Leonard Lau, he correctly assessed that the number of children playing chess, especially in secondary schools, has dwindled and this needs to be addressed. Other areas of concern include the current branding of chess amongst Singaporeans, the education of chess ethics to the young chessplayers' parents instead of players themselves, beefing up the chess organising infrastructure in terms of new organisers and staff, eg arbiters and volunteers and so on. Many ideas were offered and feedback sought amongst those who attended, a number of them stakeholders such as chess schools, trainers, arbiters and parents. It was felt that that the current chess tournament calendar was a little too intense, with little opportunities for one to play casually. Some opined that the present Grand Prix sys...

Tan Zhong Kai, a 13 year old student from Victoria School has won the Challengers Section of the Whampoa Open Rapid Chess Tournament held over the weekend with 6/7 pts, finishing ahead of several seasoned and higher rated competitors. My congratulations go to him as he has put in diligent work towards his game. Well done!

The July ratings reflect some healthy increases in ratings for the ones who have worked at their game, Royce Tan once again gained 127 pts from his last rating to increase 150 since his January rating. Hui Ling was taking part in more competitions this year and has done well in the last 2 tournaments to gain a hefty 89 pts from April to total 122 pts gained since January. It was a slide for last quarter's top performer I Shiuan, whose performance in the Serangoon and Teck Ghee tournaments caused him to lose pts mainly due to unfamiliar opening play from his opponents. Hopefully we've patched that and the decline should cease. Malcolm and Bryan made modest gains, but with correct thought processes shaped during our sessions they should make bigger process. A few have dropped out of the list owing to O Levels and PSLE which made them inactive. Finally Tricia Koh joins the list after a long wait of 2 years! Hopefully she would find more time to play and improve her rating.

This year's National Inter-Schools is slated to begin 31 August - 1 September. As usual, going by statistics over the last 3 years: BOYS U14      TEAMS SCHOOLS     PLAYERS 2010 18 15 90 2011 13 10 65 2012 12 9 54 SEC OPEN 2010 31 25 149 2011 29 18 136 2012 30 24 146 OPEN 2010 16 10 73 2011 10 8 48 2012 12 8 55 Note that the Secondary Open section is combined with the Girls U16 category, otherwise the numbers will drop if we are to measure only boy's participation. I am sure the number of ladies playing in secondary school has dropped but will need to work out the statistics at another post. The trend that fewer schoolchildren engage in chess for school competition after they turn 16 years of age shows a gradual erosion of interest (seen from the number of players still playing in the Open). This could also be d...

The Standard Chess event started on Saturday 8 June at the Imperial Mae Ping Hotel in Chiang Mai Thailand. Singapore has the largest contingent of trainers here, working hard round the clock to guide the players before each game and post-mortems after. I was taking care of my 3 charges, 2 of which were ill from flu and recovering from fever and cough. But I am very proud of them as they showed good spirit, played their games with grit and managed decent scores. Royce Tan is currently on 2.5 out of 3 points, scheduled to meet the Indonesian 4th place finisher at Hue last year. Our preparations have been most useful in anticipating the positions that we are confident in scoring. Most U10 players do not pay much attention to their openings so it is a great boost of confidence when we see our preparation yield results. I am counting on 2 more wins today from Royce so that he gets the award of going to the next AAG with a 50% subsidy as promised by SCF President Ignatius Leong! Hui Ling sco...

The turnout of 73 players was less than satisfactory, probably because there is still a week of school before the holidays begin on 1 June. Nonetheless, the tournament went ahead with the best playing conditions for the participants and we truly thank those who came to play. Some of my students took part, all except 3 won prizes. For the Silver section, Nicholas Low finished 11th while Zhong Kai and Nicholas Teo came in 17th and 6th respectively. Adrian Yeo won Best Performance for Gold Section (as he was rated below 1600 and came in 13th).    I managed to persuade my new student to play and he enjoyed his tournament making friends in between games.                                     The games at the Gold Section were fiercely contested, with Tan WeiLiang and Jared Neubronner (both our past winners) leading the pack at Round 3, but fortunes started to change at the 2nd day. Weiliang coul...