Friday, January 14, 2011

Sharing knowledge- It is already happening

Slightly over 2 years ago Sumant came to stay in my house and he helped Mark improve his game for nearly a week. He helped Mark change from a d4 to an e4 player and he gave us a lot of resources. After that Lim Zhuo Ren helped Mark to understand preparation by showing him how to prepare a line against an opponent. During Asean and at the Singapore Open as well as Mal/Sing Edward Lee continued to share with Mark and together developing deeper understanding of openings and strategy.

Many other juniors have shared with one another. Jianwen, Jun Jiang, Tarik, Kaushal, Roshan etc.

And during Mal/Sing Mark and Afiq Afyfy shared from their understanding of modern. And Mark helped Sumant prepare a line for his next round opponent.

Currently it is not formalised and is ad hoc but I think there is a lot of power in these exchanges. Lets consider the scenario of the juniors. First, they are no Kasparov so in reality they have no real "secrets".

Second, they have no one else to help them since there is no return of knowledge from the seniors. Knowledge gained in part from the sponsorship of the Malaysian public. So the juniors only have themselves. If they share then others will share with them too. Together their standard will rise and give each other tougher and tougher fights. By doing so they are in a way also forcing themselves to improve.

Think about it. What is the alternative for them? If we formalise this then what I will do is to put up the names of each and every senior they will have to fight. We will look at their games over the years. I will ask every junior there to share of their experience if they have played against any of the seniors before. I will ask for their evaluation and conclusions drawn from the games. I will then ask for feedback from the other players. We will examine if the evaluations/conclusions are valid or not. We will then discuss alternative ideas generated by the group.

And then we will prepare. Each preparation based on their individual strengths and weaknesses.

And then they will continue to share as they develop their weapons. And at the end of the 5 days they will emerge and give the seniors a fight for the money. How about it? Would this be a tournament you would like to see?

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