Preparing for Perak Close on the 28th/29th December.

Ref: Here.

This will be our last Tournament for the year before we prepare for next year's run. Our target goal is National Close 2014. In the post above I said that I believed we found the way not to have accidental draws and losses to players below our rating. To a large part that was the focus of our chess camp. Here.

You may wonder why that was not so easy to achieve but without which we found our forward traction stalled.

So let's consider this more deeply today. This was a topic we discussed a lot in the chess camp. Lets examine this statement.

It is much easier to win when the opponent is trying to win too.

Strange statement yes? But think about it. If your opponent is not trying to win and you don't want a draw then it is not so straight forward. They can kill off the game by avoiding all tactics and reaching bland positions (drawish weapons). Or you may underestimate the opponent and overextend. Then you are punished. Hence draw or loss.

If you can understand that then you will understand Li Tian's basic strategy towards his current Fide rating of 2300. You will understand that that was why he did not play in Tournaments where there was a wide spread of lower and higher rated players until recently. If he did he risked drawing and losing to lower rated players too.

But since the beginning of this year I see he has changed to some more aggressive openings. So he has started on his journey to overcome those weaknesses that I said Mark had in the post above.

On the other hand we are now moving towards beating stronger players again. So we are moving back to a deeper study of competitor analysis.

For that reason Perak Close is good for our development. We only have 2 strong players to focus on who are unlikely to want to draw with us. Fong Yit San and Fadzil Nayan. Both are worthy adversaries.

As I have said before. There are no stronger and weaker National Juniors. There are only Juniors who have taken different paths. One group have taken the path of avoiding fighting chess and the other have taken the path of fighting chess. Whichever strategy they have employed, they will meet again at some future date and then we will all see which way is the better.

I hope that you can see that Li Tian's strategy works against him now that he is 2300. High pressure indeed to only start learning how to win at 2300. For when you try to win, the flip side is that you can lose too. Still honestly I hope he makes it but he has taken the wrong road for the long term. Ref: Here.

One other question before we end. Which group do you think is more likely to win us medals? The ones that play fighting chess or the ones that play just to get high ratings?

We are looking forward to a good fight this Perak Close in healthy competition.