Jimmy's comments is very revealing.

Ref: Here.

I am very familiar with Jimmy and his supporters views. And I agree with him that they are now in a rut according to the article he referenced. Since this question was also posed to me by a few members of the new committee in MCF, let me try here to explain again why I think Jimmy's approach is wrong and is in fact the primary reason why the old MCF had done so badly over our long history.

You see, Chess was historically actually designed to train Generals or CEO's in the business world today and not for the technicalist. So attributes like being able to see the big picture, good decision making under battle conditions were the goals of the game together with good planning, good training etc.

But that was not the case in our MCF of yesterday.

Please allow me to use my son, Mark as an example since I lack any other now. I have used chess as well as other mind games to teach Mark those aspects. Granted that my technical knowledge in chess is not that deep. However Mark has become a school debater when I used chess to demonstrate the structure of arguments, he produced a video for his school which was short listed for a prize in Perak. He was also his school magazine's editor-in-chief.

Today he still uses his lessons in chess when he practices his martial arts in Kendo and Aikido. And I am now using chess to teach him about the strategies involved in the trading of shares on Bursa as well as about business as conducted via the internet.

And I still believe that he will do well in next years National Close as he now trains to narrow the technical gap after his one year layoff for STPM. I think the greatest lessons that Mark learned from chess is his discipline, concentration and a strong fighting spirit.

So I have argued that Chess can be seen from both perspective. To develop the CEO or to develop the technicalist. And of course that debate is still raging across Malaysian chess today.

A few new members now in the MCF committee actually come from the General/CEO category. I think it is time to give those views a chance. Think about it. Jimmy's referenced article has shown the end result of his methods. So what have we got to lose? Surely we know by now that that road leads nowhere.

So why don't we try another plan and agree to changing our fortunes? At least give it a try and stop trying to undermine efforts to improve.

At the very least if we change tact, we will be producing more General's/CEO's along the way. However it is still my belief that our GM also lies along that track.

Thank you for reading.