Report from first day of Perak Close.

It's good to play in Perak again after all these years. We stopped playing actively here after Mark moved to the National level for the Juniors in late 2009 to get more exposure playing in other places and overseas. But it was nice to see old friends again that we got to know from 2005 after Mark was U12 Champ MSSPK till he was U18 Champ MSSPK in 2009 (5 years of consecutive representation for Perak).

I was not particularly surprised that the official I spoke to there did not know that Perak won 1st, 2nd and 3rd place at National Juniors beginning of this month. Some things just don't change but it sure brought back old memories. Some good and some not so good.

It's a 9 round tournament of 45 mins time control. And we played 5 rounds today. Mark plays Yit San as black tomorrow as the only 2 players with perfect score so far. So it will be a good and interesting round.

Will keep you guys posted.

Preparing for Perak Close this Saturday with games from Mark, Yit San and Yit Ho.

Here.

Johor has been kind to put up the games last night for us to prepare. When I asked for the games I said that this must be fair and available to all. So everyone will have a shot at learning competitor analysis. A level playing field so there is no advantage of information to any one side. It's all about learning from chess. What you can see from the games. It is NOT about learning insider training.

We don't have the games for Fadzil so you must look it up yourself but these are the games from National Junior 2013. Good luck at the tournament for those that are going. Prepare well and train hard.

Go here for the games.

Note: Strong players even have comments about their games as they are playing. If you are so scared you even hide your games then very simply you will never play strong chess. We need to also change our culture where games are only given to trainers with the inside tract. That is what I called insider trading. That is also essentially cheating. It is not clever, it merely says you have no confidence in your ability and your training.