That was the talk request from the pharmacists involved in antibiotic stewardship at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH), and I agreed to it on a whim. Turned out to be quite challenging, because of course there is very little in common between prescribing antibiotics and playing chess! I was quite pleased to re-learn Dr Siegbert […]
The last round of the QCD-Prof Lim Kok Ann Grandmasters Invitational ended tonight (the final game between IM(WGM) Irine Sukandar of Indonesia and IM Munkhgal Gombosuren of Mongolia being the final game to finish). It was a wonderfully organised event, and most of the credit for that goes to top coach Junior Tay and Dr […]
One more day to the start of the QCD-Prof Lim Kok Ann Grandmasters Invitationals. The tournament will be held at Metropolitan YMCA (Palm Room), 60 Stevens Road, with the first round starting at 3.30pm to 8.30pm on 7th June. The opening ceremony will be held at 2.30 PM on the first day, and I know that […]
The website for the QCD-Prof Lim Kok Ann Grandmasters Invitational is up, and it is quite impressive (for a chess website). There has been an incredible amount of background work and negotiations by top coach Junior Tay, Dr Mark Liew, and their colleagues/volunteers to get this up and running, and we will get to enjoy […]
Bucket list: to help develop more Singaporean chess grandmasters. This new tournament series in Singapore, starting in June this year, should help. The official website should be up soon. But in the meantime, more details are available at local top chess coach Junior Tay’s blog. The major sponsors are QCD Group and Prof Lim Kok […]
Three days ago, the Google Deepmind team uploaded a paper on the scientific pre-print server arXiv that is hosted by Cornell University without much fanfare (you cannot find it on the Deepmind website). Nonetheless, it was rapidly picked up by mainstream media – including the BBC among others – and chess players all around the […]
Yesterday evening, I was privileged to be able to witness current world chess champion Magnus Carlsen in action. In an event organized by the Norwegian Business Association and Simonsen Vogt Wiig law firm, Carlsen played a simul exhibition against 16 opponents at the Norwegian Ambassador’s Residence. The “opposition” were all chess amateurs, ranging from novices […]
The final game of our mini-training match, and a good example of the strengths of Wei Ming’s play. It is also quite an experience to be on the wrong side of his training preparation! After this series of games – witnessing first-hand his improvement game by game (because he prepared hard rather than because of […]
As mentioned in an earlier post, I played a series of 4 training games against international master (IM) Goh Wei Ming prior to his European trip. Most were interesting, and I thought I would try my hand at analysing chess games again. Many thanks to top local chess coach Junior Tay who took the trouble […]
Local chess international master (IM) Wei Ming GOH called a time-out on his career to play 4 tournaments in Europe this summer. He had previously achieved 2 grandmaster (GM) norms, and will require another 10-game GM norm (or 2 more GM norms under 10 games each) plus a bunch of FIDE rating points to become […]
MIPHIDIC 