Norlito Bersamina joins FGM as Technical Consultant and Chief trainer.

Although Mark and Paulo have been sparring partners since the start of the year and I have been talking to Norlito for more than a year now and found that our philosophy on chess development are really in sync from our correspondence, I was interested to see what would happen when we finally meet in person and have an honest, no holds barred detailed discussion on the strategies I have used to develop Mark and the ones Norlito has used to develop Paulo into an FM in today's extremely competitive International chess of the computer age.

Paulo's chess journey is also very different from the ones that is commonly advocated by some trainers in Malaysia. Paulo doesn't avoid any competition. He has played in Asean and Asian tournaments continuosly to gauge his true strength among his peers. He also fights in his own National Junior selections yearly to be declared Champion, winning 15 rounds out of 15 or 18 rounds out of 18 recently for that honour. That means he has All the weapons to defeat All competitors rated below him as well as weapons to fight other FM's, IM's and GM's. This is what I also want for Mark; the complete mental warrior not afraid to compete. See Paulo's achievements to date. Here.

And so we had the FGM chess camp in Batangas. (More later with pictures and descriptions).

Of particular interest to me was comparing the methods I have used as a non chess playing strategist in developing Mark so far via competitor analysis and Norlito's own training methods and approach as a chess technicalist. 

So we discussed and compared notes on our differing methods for 7 whole days right up to the last day to 3am until I left for the airport at 4am. The conclusion we reached was that both methods have merit and are actually complementary and so we have spent a lot of time devising new combined training methods for our competing juniors so that they too can reach world class. Norlito is also be borrowing a page or two from my methods for his further development of Paulo and in return he gave Mark the most comprehensive and toughest training, Mark has ever experienced in our very first FGM chess camp.

So we are keen to try out the new skills at our coming National Junior on the 1st of December in Johor.

All my best for Malaysian chess. More details here.

More details will be forthcoming at FGM Chess Academy blog. Here.