Reply to NJ

Dear NJ

I keep wanting to call you by name but will use NJ (National Junior). Thank you for your honesty and for reading my blog. Actually this blog was partly started with you in mind. I have seen you play and I know the level of your understanding in chess from the way you helped Mark prepare at Jax's. That was our first exposure to the higher level of preparation that makes a National Junior. I will answer you in a series of replies because I want to honour your excellent questions

Hey Mr Siew, I have been readin ur FirstGM blog lately (just abit)..when u said join the dots, can u give me some advice on that..I've been thinking about the part on 'imagined fears' and I find dat very true..I think it happens most of the time i lose if not all the time.

Allow me to back track a little here.

In my model, technical training begins to recede in value once you are able to understand the technical reasoning in grandmaster games. Let me try to define although there are no clear lines. That means you understand the reasons behind the order of moves, the placement of pieces and the end game techniques. In short the objective technical reasons behind why you are "winning" or "losing". Technical judgement, but without the consideration of time. Still shot understanding. That means finding the solutions to a series of frozen frames. Similar to puzzle solving in series.

Time and everything else comes under the psychology of thinking. (Thinking out of the box; out of the 64 squares.) When you reach the stage where you can evaluate your own games, then you have achieved sufficient technical understanding and you must look elsewhere for further improvement. Read here.

So I concur with your own self observation. I see that almost all, if not all of your loses are from imagined fears. I believe that this is also the case for the vast majority of our National Juniors. More in my next reply.