GilaChess Blog

I know I don’t have to blog about this as many people already know the cycle where we lose all our promising chess talents. Or at least ALL who will not see their chess talents reach even half of their full potential.

Still, I just want to share my own perception of this. With more junior chess activities we are finding more hidden talents like Yeoh Li Tian. The problem will be that Malaysia does not have the ideal chess talent development program compared to other countries.

Isn’t it sad that we have fantastic talents like Mas, Anas, Siti, Yee Weng and so many more promising juniors but they never get to reach their full potential. I’m not saying that they are spent and wasted but you can’t deny that these juniors could have attained much higher chess success if only they were in some other better developed chess country.

How many times have you heard this from a strong local chess player :-

I played this guy in our international meet and beat him. Now years later, he is a GM.(sigh)

This speaks volume about how backward our chess development is – relative to other countries.

Talent drain
We lose out a big number of our young chess talents at the age of 15-20 to studies. Many will still harbour the dream of making it big in chess but after studies most of them have already given up higher ambitions and are satisfied with the weekly chess tournament or meeting up old friends during Merdeka Team championship.

Of course there is life’s normal course where after completion of their studies, the job takes it’s toll not to mention getting married and having children. It’s no surprise Malaysia has not advanced far compared to our neighbouring countries.

Then there are those that after all these, are still active but because of lack of funds and direction, have not developed their talents any further. These players continue as strong veteran players and their quests for higher titles like FM or IM is clearly over.

Surely other chess giants like Philippines, China and Vietnam als face the talent dilution problem. How come they have GMs while we are still struggling to produce our first?

Solutions
download Hard Way, The I do not even pretend to know any solution to the above problem but here is what I think:-

Money
We need to remove money from the equation. Fear of chess depriving the young of a healthy living is quite common. How can you sacrifice your career for chess ? What are you going to live on ? Chess Professional ? Is there even such a thing ? We have got to show that becoming a chess professional is one that is respectable and comfortable. Lofty dreams eh? Getting our first Malaysian GM is not enough. If he or she lives the life of a pauper and has to struggle nobody would want to become a GM. One avenue may be coaching. It’s starting to grow in this country and perhaps with enough students, professional chess players can earn good money from this career. I think modern methods in teaching is needed to give parents more confidence in coaches. As it is right now, I see parents coach-hopping to find the best coach for their children.

Sponsor

download Great Buck Howard, The

Look at India. None of their chess professionals can survive without sponsorship. Most chess masters there hold full time jobs but the company they work for are their sponsors and allow them leave any time to take part in important chess events. Their plane ticket and everything is paid for. Even World champion Viswanathan Anand is sponsored by NIIT.

Copy Successful Training Program
China has successfully copied Russia’s School of chess and look where it has gotten them. In a short span of time (relatively speaking) they have become a chess powerhouse. Their players are one of the strongest in the world and this achievement is fantastic in my opinion. Can their success be copied?

Malaysian Scholastic
At this moment, we should not be satisfied with the fast development particularly scholastic chess in Malaysia. We have to remember that other countries are also seeing a boom in this area and are developing even faster. How many times have we seen our juniors get top 10 placing in world events only to have their progress reach a plateau after a short rise.

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When I first got the no confidence vote from Stonemaster via email to the newsgroup on Nov 20 it was like a slap in the face. I never expected it. I went into denial and even hacked my own site. However, after a long think, I guess I deserved ‘kena tembak’ by SM for neglecting my chess websites for so long (since June 2007).

In the end, I have to thank Stonemaster for the wake-up call. I’m going to put in more efforts in my chess websites and this includes Stonemaster.biz (I started it so I still consider it my responsibility).

I have not been paying notice to GilaChess.com traffic and the last few days I’ve made some improvements and updates to the site. From the looks of the traffic, these efforts seem to be bringing some results. The last few days traffic has reached 200 visitors per day – something that hasn’t happened for a long time.

download Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone dvd

• Eloise at the Plaza

There is still a lot to be done and I thank GilaChess readers for their strong support.

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This NI(DI) Seminar will be held from Dec 2 – Dec 6 at the Concorde Hotel, Shah Alam.

Places are limited. Max 24 places. 2 locals already registered. First come first serve basis.
Fee: RM 800 (normal fee USD 300 about RM 1000)
Contact Tel No: 03-23001680

Among the topics include:

• Role of Regional Chess Academies
• trainer’s Certification
• Chess in Schools
• Using the Internet/libraries in lesson preparation process
• Developing and conducting a Scholastics program

While She Was Out buy download Brazil The RM 800 covers sponsorship of the one-off FIDE registration and a 2 year licence of approximately RM 500 for those who passFor those who pass.

Note: To date, Malaysia only has 3 FIDE certified coaches.

You can find out more about the seminar here Escape from Alcatraz divx

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone full movie

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I was surfing randomly when I found this blog post by a Malaysian 16 year old girl.

I Like Chess…
Saturday, November 17, 2007

Besides it being a game of strategy, the game teaches you how to part with pieces. I’m not a fantastic player (heck, even I lose to my youngest sister!) but I still love the defense and offense tactics used in the game. I love watching people play too.

download Sands of Iwo Jima By watching people play, you can tell what their train of thought is like. How precise they are. How willing they are to sacrifice. Through mere observation, one weakness I noticed is that most of my classmates always sacrifice their pawns. Sometimes saying ‘Ah, I can’t lose anything’. On the other hand, they become a lioness when protecting all of their important pieces like the rook and the knight.

Being able to part with each piece needs just as much balance as protecting each piece. You can’t tip the scale.

Who Killed Doc Robbin dvdrip Of course, you don’t sacrifice all of your important pieces – a sure route to suicide – but you be selective. You learn to part with the apparently important pieces and focus on the ones important.

This process of eliminating importance is similar to decisions made in real life. As the momentum of the ball in our game of life (no, not THE Game of life, OUR game of life) picks up, we face split roads. We’ve to eliminate and sacrifice things that are less important because there are only 24 hours in a day. One can only do so much.

I like chess. I really do.

~ http://adelyntalks.blogspot.com/

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone buy

I’m sure she is has not taken part in active competition and I hazard a guess that there is a huge number of these people in Malaysia. If only we can reach out to them and get more of them active

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Spotted by Susan Polgar first.

The national school chess competition has grown exponentially over the past five years, by 40 to 50 per cent every year, with some competitors as young as five. Other schools are taking chess out of the lunch hour and integrating it into their maths classes for the strategic thinking and problem-solving skills the game fosters

~ original article

This is indeed good news. We are starting to see something like this happening in Malaysia. MSSM has already reinstated chess. The NSC and OCM is starting to recognize chess as a sport. Let’s hope nothing spoils this growth.

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Yes, you can create a blog in under 10 minutes. It is really that easy and fast.

Here’s how:

Click on the picture…

Photo (c) Lim Tse Pin.

PS:
Please ask permission before you use ANY image. As a matter of courtesy don’t forget to credit the person who took the picture.

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Even though there’s no denying Malaysians are backwards in terms of Chess compared to our neihbouring Asian countries but I think we are quite up to date in our online social networking tech. I am not a sociable type of person and yet I already have over 10 chess friends in my Friendster list. Also, Malaysians have more online presence compared to our close neighbour, Singapore. I want to see us leading in this area because if we are active online, we can monetize and profit from the various advertisement channels available.

I’m a good example of this having quit my full time job and earn my living solely from the internet. I am doing quite ok too at the moment.

Here’s another $$$ reason why you should start blogging and see if making money online is your cup of tea. That’s the reason I’m promoting chess players to blog. It would be nice to see the first Chess Problogger solely funded by his or her blog instead of begging for sponsorship money from companies.

Podcast Advertising to Grow from $80 million to $400 million

That’s according to a report to be released by eMarketer this week, which finds that spending on podcasting advertising will quintuple over the next five years, from a paltry $80 million base in 2006 to a $400 million market in 2011. (Granted, this is still on the small side, considering the $20 billion interactive ad market expected this year.)

eMarketer analyst James Belcher is betting that a familiar Web power player will spark much of that growth: Google.

Belcher expects that by 2008, the 800-pound algorithm gorilla will develop a version of AdSense that can be easily adapted to podcasts, theoretically allowing any Joe Schmoe podcaster to implement advertising. “That should help grow the market,” he said.

read more from Digital Podcast

What is podcasting you may ask? It’s a form of blogging too but using audio. Listen to my informal phone conversation with Leong Mun Wan and you get the idea. It’s like a short radio show but done on a blog.

So my suggestion is to get started with a blog. Spend some time getting used to blogging. Then move over and try podcasting.

Who wants to join a podcast or podcast network worth a millon USD$ a year in advertising ? I am definitely in !!

PS:
Blogging for money is not a get-rich quick thing. It takes time typically at least 6-12 months before you can build up a profitable blog.

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So far our Under 8 rep in Turkey is doing well winning all four rounds in a row.

Picture (c) Lim Tse Pin (http://malaysianchess.blogspot.com)

download Merchants of Venus (aka Dirty Little Business, A)

Here’s one of his games in the third round:

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Last night GilaChess.com got hacked. And the hacker was me!

download Like Mike

Yes I hacked my own site

Some thought it was a big joke but most thought that my site was really hacked. Sorry for the deception and if you were fooled by this. I just wanted to test a theory of mine.

• Know Thy Enemy psp

If GilaChess was to close down temporarily just for one day, the traffic should be diverted to other websites such as Stonemaster. It was only logical. That’s the main reason I “hacked” my site and rendered it useless for a 24 hours.

Some of you saw this:

or this:

10 minutes after the hack I already got messages via SMS, Instant messaging and phone calls warning me that someone “hacked” GilaChess.

Anyway it was worth it just to look at the stats:

My theory was wrong. Even though GilaChess went down, the traffic for Stonemaster did not increase significantly. So this can only mean both Stonemaster and GilaChess have the same audience. These are people who visit to both sites. So when my traffic dropped, Stonemaster traffic did not increase because the same visitors were already there. So I see no reason for a traffic fight as the majority of chess players will go to both sites.

Another reason for the hack was to show Stonemaster that who has the biggest traffic is not important to me. He can be the new no. 1 for forever . GilaChess main function is as a news website and making sure organisers gets their event publicised. It’s as simple as that.

Good luck and congratulations to Stonemaster.biz as the new No. 1 biggest no of visitors for a Malaysian Chess website.

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