Wednesday, March 25, 2015

A TOUCH OF REALITY

Reality hurts. A lot. I must accept the fact that I am not as strong as I once was. Losing to lower rated opponents repeatedly confirms that I am now on the decline. I just could not see what was happening on the board anymore. I developed the pieces and then lost my way in the calculations. I thought finishing marking my students' papers would help me focus on the task, but it did not. The downfall was apparent since game number one where I could not finish off my opponent in an easy endgame.

10 years elapsed since my first FIDE rating of 2065 which eventually went up to 2068 in 2011, and now it stands at 1943, a massive 125 points drop because of a single tournament, The National Closed. This was a tournament I never entered before, and this will be a tournament I will hardly play in the future, considering that I could not even beat a 16++ opponent which will make my task in the upcoming selections harder.

Diagnosing on the factors, I do believe the inability to successfully solve the problems I currently have is the numero uno. Even though I hid them in the back of my head, they still unconsciously disturbed my calculations. Until I am free from these disturbances, I can never play my best games. Sadly, I cannot see a solution to these problems in the near future, which will mean that my best games are still going to be far, far away.

Hopefully, I could drag myself out of these mess sooner rather than later.  

The Red Knights

The Red Knights

As for my teammates, I am glad that they had fared better. Two of them (Dr. Nasrul and Nik Ahmad Farouqi) were among the top 15 in the Open Category while Najihah was 11th in the Female Category. Even though none of the Red Knights managed to become national flag bearer this time, we were proud of our achievement.

You can read more about this in PCNK website.
 

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