Competitors analysis-The whammy-Part 1

This is going to be tough to read. I hope you will take your time to consider its merits. What I have said so far is pretty self evident. But this is not.

Just before the Asean training we had a short private session with Ziaur. In this session he showed us how to use chess base properly. The idea is that we can only use any opening according to our understanding. That basically means we cannot copy blindly what a GM uses for any opening. Chess base allows us to do that. To slowly build our own individual version of any opening. Be it Ruy Lopez, Sicillian, whatever.

I thought this was a good tool to pass on and so I requested it for the training of the trainers during Asean. This did not materialise simply because no trainers took up the free training we were going to provide except for Jax Tham. So it had to be scrapped. That was a big puzzle for me then. But now I am seeing clearer. (Go back to my postings on Asean.)

Below I mentioned the need for the correct training program. Now given the known facts what would this program look like?

Let us start off with how our players are being trained now. Each trainer is a specialist in a particular opening. So you go to one for dragon and another for something else. A little like the old kung fu movies. And the kung fu masters have a secret weapon that they do not teach anyone else.

But what is todays reality? Today we have internet. Today we have jalur lebar. We have web sites for latest games, we have instructional videos from stronger kung fu masters. We have chess base and we have chess engines for analysis. We have programs that train tactics. We can get tons of eBooks on chess. And we can play with players from all around the world online.

So how does this change things? Remember I said we have to understand the nature of a problem before we can solve it?

It seems clear to me that in todays world, information is not the challenge anymore. Technical information abounds. So where is todays challenge? What do we need to change to keep abreast? What do we need to change to get ahead?

I agree that with the younger kids, maybe till around 12 depending on maturity, we still need the old way. But after 12? When we start to lose our edge....

I will suggest a training program that makes sense to me in part 2. See you then.