Psych evaluation of our Olympiad Team.

Ref: Here.

It's a psychological truism that psychological damage is very easy to inflict, sometimes in the course of one event or days and can take many years to undo. Some never recover.

A good application of situational analysis here is in observing the reactions of people who are totally adapted to and comfortable with lies and venom but behave like rabid dogs the moment the truth is revealed.

A major part of my interaction with Zhuo Ren during the SEA games selection training was in trying to convince him that he had a decent shot at winning or drawing against Mok in a straight fight. I did not succeed in this endeavour and so I was not totally surprised when it was reported back to me that a deal was struck if he wrote that email. Somewhere and somehow his confidence in his own ability had been leached from him during his past training.

We had studied Li Tian's recent "suspect" games and find it hard to see the quality of that strong fighting spirit that I observed in him earlier. Something is wrong there. Chess displays your thinking on the board. It shows how you make decisions. So what is going on?

Note: It now appears that the games for NC2012 will not be coming out anytime soon. This forces the speculation that the games are withheld from the entire chess community to hide the poor decision making of certain MCF officials in selecting Li Tian over the other stronger players.

And so Li Tian will go to the Olympiad not bolstered by the confidence of playing strong chess. And I am not sure if Zhuo Ren has resolved in his own mind what happened at SEA games selection and where the real damage originated from. This will put both of our juniors in a psychologically vulnerable position at the time of going. Where are they going to find the confidence to meet strong players from overseas? Technical is not enough. And this is material. Let me explain why.

Mok has been silent through most of this drama but it is generally accepted that he is subservient to Jimmy. And Jimmy is the Captain. The role of the Captain is to keep the Team on an even keel and focused on the goal. Now I hope I have established that Jimmy is a totally egotistical individual with no empathy for anyone. His primary motive is to hide his weaknesses. Further to that he has almost no emotional control. And that makes for a very dangerous mix and will likely create a toxic environment within the Malaysian camp.

I think we can already begin to see the signs from his writings on his blog. He is now saying that Li Tian is not yet ready. If we look at the board placings we can begin to see the potential sacrificing of players for the purpose of protecting Jimmy's position and self image. So it is likely to be Jimmy's goal there. What has happened to the Malaysian goal?

Further to this we also see that Jimmy's reaction to situations takes only 2 forms. Either vile and venomous reactions when threatened or total escapism, for instance talking about his room, other peoples room or super GM's etc.

He has displayed no ability at solving real problems or finding solutions.

And so we will likely find a lot of finger pointing at the Olympiad. This is not a team. What type of person are we entrusting our Captaincy to? MCF has totally screwed up here.

That leaves possibly only one man fighting for Malaysia. Yee Weng. And I am sure that Jimmy will not take kindly to that given his psychological makeup.

This is a total mess and that is how MCF has been typically making decisions for us all these years. Is it a wonder that we don't have a GM where even Bangladesh already have a few? Where they are already exporting their expertise to Nepal.

Note: This also presents a very high risk for further psychological damage to our players. Especially the juniors. Under the intense pressure of the competition, Jimmy is likely to turn on them instead of protecting them given his history of handling the Zhuo Ren case. Hopefully Yee Weng will have adequate mental defences not to be too affected but I think it will be very difficult to achieve under Jimmy's Captaincy.

All in all I think this outing will be a major disaster if my analysis is correct. And I am very confident that it is.

This situation needs to be changed. Lets wake up and say enough is enough. Lets vote those guys in MCF who made this decision out at the next AGM.

Then we can have a bright future for our very gifted and talented players. Do it for them. Do it for our future. We have wasted too much time already. Chess has already damaged too many people the way we do it. Look around. They are all there for us to see. Don't let them damage any more of our junior players.