Observation and questions raised from Bangkok Open.

Final ranking here.

I invite you to click on the name of player no.17, IM Saptarshi Roy and look at his run. Can you see what I mean by the correct weaponry? He got 6 points, the same as our players but quite an amazing run.

Now go and look at the run of our strongest players by clicking on their names the same way. Question. Could it be they are using different tournament strategies? If the answer is yes, then this poses an interesting topic for further debate. A point to consider is whether you can have a tournament strategy to place yourself higher in the final standing by ducking early to avoid meeting the strong players.

Interesting yes? Now let me ask you this question. Which player do you think is closer to being able to make a GM run? Which strategy brings us closer to that GM?

If we can find the answer to this question then I think we will be ready for the first Malaysian GM.

Now read this again. Here.

Thank you for taking this thinking journey with me.

All my best in your chess development.