Some basic tools for Psychological Evaluation.

It's a psychological truism that fear transmits. 

It takes an inordinate amount of training to be able to withstand a toxic environment. And fear usually finds its expression in anger, anxiety etc.

So a good tool to categorise and measure fear is in situational analysis. That is to observe the situation that elicits the fear responses. The key element being appropriate or inappropriate responses. So an extreme response to a ostensibly non threatening situation is a strong indicator of an underlying issue.

This analysis is of particular importance in the understanding of sports psychology. For this will give a strong indication of the mental performance of the athlete under pressure. For instance, if the athlete breaks down under much less pressure than the environment that he is expected to perform will generate, then this athlete will be unsuitable for that level of competition.

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Now since we are about Chess, read this again. Here. We all know that tremendous pressures are generated and exerted in competitive chess. The pressures are difficult even for a psychologically balanced adult to handle let alone a child. Now I hope you are beginning to see also the dangers of chess when taught purely by technical trainers with no understanding of sports psychology.

Lets see what happens. Now pressure is necessary for growth. Overcoming pressure takes you to the next level. Cast your mind back now to a tournament. It is inevitable that the player needs to both win and lose during their progress. And with the loses comes anguish and the search for answers. This is a moment of extreme vulnerability. This is the time when their minds become open and their normal defenses down.

As I said in the article above this is an opportunity to teach. But the converse is also true. When the mind is open this also becomes the opportunity to inject poison. And this is what I mean by the double edge sword of chess. Especially for highly motivated competitors.

Let me give you an example. When Mark first became U12 Champion in MSSPK in his first major tournament and only having started playing tournament chess the year before, he then played at the Perak Close. That was a 2 day event. On the first day Mark was the front runner but he crashed on the second day but still came out as U12 Champ again. The then President, Dr Yee, came up to him and told him that he was mentally weak and then overlooked his prize as U12 Champ.

That evaluation of Dr Yee was pure poison and totally inaccurate. You do not suddenly develop the skill to withstand heavy pressure overnight. It has to be slowly trained. In that Tournament Mark beat at least 2 former Perak Champions and so that was quite an achievement for a young boy new in Tournament. So on balance his accomplishment far outweighed his failure. A negative evaluation once accepted, since it came from an "respected" Official or a "titled" player can lodge itself in the mind and begin a mental tape playing.

Now in Chess, this experience will be repeated over and over again. So at and after every tournament opportunities will arise to either inject the positive lessons as mentioned in link above or to inject poison. And over the years this becomes your mindset.

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And that is the very real and present danger. You know what I am talking about. And I hope this will become even clearer when I apply all this to the Jimmy's ("Olympiad") Team. After my evaluation I will also try to predict what will happen there according to my psychological profiling. What type of decisions will be made or not made. The type of environment the team will find itself in given the exterior and interior conditions.

At the end of this, I hope you can all see the damage certain individuals have wrought on our Malaysian players over the years. The sending of them untrained and unprepared, the messages they instil in your mind when they reject you after you have won your place in a fair competition, when they try to ban you when you improve, when they attack you till you breakdown and write a poisonous email yourself. What they are doing to the mental health of our players?

And then finally we send them to "compete". Try to read this carefully. It can happen to you as a player or to your child. Take a note of the individuals involved in these negative practises and try to avoid them if possible.

Note: In my 8 years in chess, I find strong circumstantial evidence that this is a deliberate policy by certain individuals to control and break our players to serve their own ends. So be watchful.