No Child's Play

Who ever thought teaching chess to 8 year-old kids can involve difficult decision-making and carefully chosen words? There are two issues that I would like to address today.

I think we should all understand that kids like to win. I have in my life only encountered one exception, but I will talk about this later. But let's just accept the generalization that kids like to win. So one of the kids that I have been "teaching" to (out of 8 other kids), is what seems like a beginner among beginners. Just to note, I don't like to use the word "teach" because it's more like sharing to me. It is obvious that he is trying hard and is willing to try hard, but just can't seem to beat the rest of the kids. So on this fine day, his father pulled me aside and told me that he is really trying and asked if I could give him some encouragement. So that troubled me. Firstly, now the parents have expectations on me. I hate it when people tell me how to do my job, at least when I am supposed to be good at it. I don't claim to be something like a Grandmaster or anywhere close to that, but I can say without boasting that I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to chess. Now to say that I hate this situation would be an exaggeration because he didn't tell me what to do, he just asked politely. So I am just mildly troubled/irritated. Irritated because of the above-mentioned preference, but troubled because I don't know what to do. You see, even years of practice in encouraging girlfriends who needed to be encouraged did not train me to encourage an 8 year-old. How do you tell an 8 year-old who hates to lose, loves to win, that it's OK to lose, and our goal here is to get him to improve so that he can win in the future. For an 8 year-old, the end of the one hour chess session IS the future. Anything else that happens two hours from his arrival at the chess session is a new day altogether. I am not belittling a child's mindset, but merely stating their thought process. Because to him, being better 6 months from now is simply not worth the effort. He wants to start kicking butts now. I mean, if the we invented instant noodles and other magical thingamabobs, who can blame them for expecting instant results?

I tried to think hard about the time when I started chess. What was it like and how did I overcome losing? Maybe overcome is not the right word, because obviously, the way to overcome losing is to win. Hahaha... So how did I accept losing? Why did I get better? How did I get better? This ties back to the earlier point I made about what Kasparov and Abraham Lincoln were trying to say. It is very important to understand ourselves and where we are. I don't mean to preach but some messages just cannot be said enough. I remembered my first tournament. It was the PFS Open 1992. Back then, I could only watch in the sidelines the games played out by Chuah Heng Meng, Eric Cheah and many other "untouchables" who were always playing in the top five boards. To be honest, I didn't even bother watching because there was no way I could have understood the games. But I remember this one game. I was playing against a girl's MSSM U-20 champion. At that time, I was definitely no match for her. I was down a lot of material. With only a queen, bishop and a few pawns left, I set up a mating cheapo on White's g2 square. While barely staying alive, I managed to finally place my queen and bishop in that holy diagonal and got the checkmate that I was pining for 5 moves before that. A cheapo indeed! But of course, before the game, I had no idea she was an MSSM champion and my dad was very surprised that I won. Everything might have changed if I had known. My whole life would have taken a completely different path. I might have played the game knowing that I would lose, and would eventually lose. I would then go on to be an average player not knowing that I have a tricky mind, even as a kid. Or maybe my chess development was fated... Who knows? I'd like to think that it's little moments like these in our lives that are significant, and that we won't realize it unless we think about them.

I was 8 years-old when that happened. Why is it that I can remember only that game from 16 years ago. I don't remember any other game from when I was eight. That game was by no means brilliant. Upon hindsight, the only thing that can explain this phenomena, other than my powerful memory, is that for some reason, I was encouraged by that game. I can safely say that before I came to university, I have received no encouragement or a "well done" from either of my parents. I remember in National Age-Group 1999 where I squandered a half-point lead going into the final round. I drew a game after losing my queen because of the "touch-move" rule. I got over-excited over the idea of winning the tournament with a 10 move combination and in style. What was more devastating was that I could have won after losing my queen but I took a cheeky draw offer. I was so excited about winning that I played the wrong first move of the combination. A perfect lesson on "counting your chickens before they are hatched". Nevertheless, the point of this story was to say that despite this devastating loss, I did not even get "It's OK, you can try again next year". Did I wish I got a word of encouragement or two? I don't know. Would I have been weaker? Because it definitely wasn't OK to lose in a tournament of such importance. By the way, I tied for first place and lost in the blitz playoffs. No "Congratulations" for second place, no "It's OK" for not being first. How did that affect me? Did that make me stronger? Wiser? Most probably so. But I was already 15 then. Half of that lifetime ago, did I think that winning was everything? I loved to win. No doubt about that. But what I am trying drive home is that my experience has not taught me about giving words of encouragement. You lose, time after time, you think about why you lose, and you fix it. That's the kind of education that I got and was expected of me.

So back to the point of this issue, which is, if you can remember, how do you encourage an 8 year-old kid who is trying hard but not getting the fruits of his labor? As I write this article and think about it, the only words of comfort that I can come up with are "The other kids have been playing much longer than you have, and if you keep working hard the way you do, you may well become better than them in no time". Does that even sound honest? Because I hate telling lies, especially to kids. I hate being lied to as a kid. Maybe that's where I get my lying abilities from. Because I get lied to all the time. But that's another story for another day. So if any of you people have any ideas on how to deal with this kid, let me know.

As for the second issue, which is kind of similar to the first, and has the same underlying problem. Another kid in the group who also loves to win, repeatedly asked for my permission to play against the aforementioned kid. Now the reason is obvious because he will get to win all the time. He went so far as to lie to me about not having played against the other kid yet. So this kid is by no means close to being the weakest player in the group. If anything, he is one of the better players. The key difference here is that he does not need encouragement. But the trouble is, how do I explain to him that winning is not everything? To him, winning IS everything. Can I, dare I, should I dash his dreams and desires at a tender age of eight? We all want kids to dream big, be all they can be and all that good stuff. I can't just send the roof crashing down on him and tell him that in life, we cannot beat everyone at everything.

So I did not allow this kid, Brad, to play against the previous kid, Aaron. See the problem when parents try to interfere with my job? Now I don't want Aaron to keep losing, so I told Brad that you can't shouldn't keep playing Aaron if you want to improve. I tried to explain to him the concept of "It's OK to lose" and the main purpose of our chess sessions is to help them improve so that they can win more in the future. I think that even though he understood the message deep down inside, he kept it inside him that he didn't like my decision to not let him play Aaron. I can deal with a kid not liking me or whatever. But how could I have avoided the situation? What could I have said to appease a kid who loves to win, and yet help him to improve? That answer was the best I could come up with, so if you have better ideas, let me know.

That marks the end of the two issues that I had, and now, as promised I will return to the exception of the generalization that I had asserted, which was all kids love to win. So a third kid in this group, Chuck, who in the previous week, intentionally lost to Brad to make him happy. He said to me that well, he would rather someone else be happy since it's not a "real" tournament. By the way, the background story is that I organized a tournament for them and put a prize up for grabs. So Chuck doesn't feel like this is a real tournament because it's not officially organized by some recognized group or whatever. So he decides to let Brad win and I saw him intentionally throw a won game. It wasn't an excuse he gave for losing. I knew he saw how he could have won. I have the ability to see what moves other people are thinking about. When you have played chess for as long as I have, these things just come naturally. I just couldn't understand why a kid would do that because as we know it, "Winning is not everything, it is the ONLY thing!"

Anyway, it's just something to leave you people with. Dealing with children is most definitely no child's play. Man, I can't wait to get a kid a torture him with all kinds of psychological tricks. But that's just me. I am not saying I am ready to raise a kid. I just wanna see how messed up they will become. Hahaha...

Say What You Need To Say

Say What You Need To Say - John Mayer

Take all of your wasted honor.
Every little past frustration.
Take all of your so called problems,
Better put 'em in quotations.

Say what you need to say (x8)

Walkin' like a one man army,
Fightin' with the shadows in your head.
Livin' up the same old moment
Knowin' you'd be better off instead

If you could only...Say what you need to say (x8)

Have no fear for givin' in.
Have no fear for giving over.
[ Say What You Need To Say lyrics found on http://www.completealbumlyrics.com ]
You better know that in the end
It's better to say too much, than never to say what you need to say again.

Even if your hands are shaking,
And your faith is broken.
Even as the eyes are closin',
Do it with a heart wide open.

(Wide Heart)

Say what you need to say (x7)

Say what you need to, Say what you need to...

Say what you need to say.

A Lifetime Inspired

Not many people can say they know what the purpose of life is. Most people go through a lifetime not knowing what they live for, or what we should be living for. From my experience, there is no need nor reason to seek for a purpose in life. We spend our time asking questions for a reason to live, in vain, I believe.

The most important aspect of living is to make our lives as meaningful as possible. Since a while ago, I have stopped asking myself what the purpose of life is. We go through challenges day in and day out, we get tested by "god" or "nature" or "life" as we call it in our different beliefs and we inevitably question our faith, and reason for being. Someone asked me, why should there be a reason for living? Why must there be a purpose? In relation to my post about the "New Year", I would like to restate that it is of utmost importance to know "whither we are tending". If there is no purpose, then there is no need or desire to go anywhere, and we would just be floating entities of nothingness. So I argue that there is a purpose, unknown as it may be, and probably unseekable.

Coming back to the purpose of this blog post albeit not the purpose of my life, I would just like to share a little something about what makes my life more meaningful. We can go through life doing what makes us happy. In fact, that is probably the happiest you can make yourself to be. To obtain a larger degree of what is termed but undefined as "happiness", yes, there can be more happiness than what we can conjure, we must notice that other people can become the source of our very own happiness too. One obvious example you might come up with would be your loved ones. But that is not the point I am addressing today. I am talking about the greater happiness that the world can bestow upon us, how making other people happy, can make us happy.

Many people are easily disillusioned by a grandeur of an ideal. I am humble enough to believe that I could be one of these people. But I have always been happy to be able to inspire people, to help people maximize their potential, to be all they can be. I feel the joy in the joy of others. I may not be employed, or working in a back office somewhere in the outback, or anything, but I will make it my reason for being to inspire people, to show them what they are meant to do. I say this with confidence, yet humility, in hopes of not being ridiculed, but in the spirit of sharing and good faith. It will be my purpose, to help you find yours. How am I going to do this, in this world of more than 6 billion people? One at a time, my friends, one at a time.

Blow Your Mind

Many of you might not even come close to understanding what this is about. But I just witnessed a masterpiece today. Definitely one of the best games of Warcraft ever played. This will fucking blow your mind. Many of you won't even know who Grubby is, but he is definitely one of the greatest champions of any sport. He may have only won the WCG (World Cyber Games) once, but his attitude and character is exemplary, top notch, and definitely admirable. Here is some background info on Grubby:

Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen (May 11, 1986–), is a Dutch professional player of the real-time strategy game Warcraft III (his primary race is "Orc"); he is currently signed to the top electronic sports team: MeetYourMakers (MYM). He was rated the #1 top Warcraft III player in the World by SK Gaming and WCReplays.com on February 2006, going up from the second place (first spot was held by Grubby's rival Jang Jae "Moon" Ho he received when the ranking was first conceived 3 months earlier). Now Moon and Grubby are team mates at MYM.

Grubby is primarily a solo competitor, but is well known for being one of the best 2v2 team players in the world. In the past, he has formed strong teams with former 4Kings members such as Myth, Yoan "ToD" Merlo, and Olav "Creolophus" Undheim, achieving great success in clanwars and team competitions such as WC3L. It awaits to be seen whether Manuel will play in MyM's 2v2 team.

Showing consistent strong tournament finishes since 2004, together with Moon he is the only player in WarCraft 3 history to have at least one major tournament every year since 2004. To be more precise: he won the World Cyber Games in 2004, the Electronic Sports World Cup in 2005 and the World Series of Video Games in 2006.

His total prize money earnings exceed $160,000 USD. Additional incomes over the years have come from various sources such as a salary received from professional gaming team 4Kings and offering Warcraft 3 lessons.

In the web Mockumentary, Pure Pwnage, the main character Jeremy receives a phone call from "Grubby", a reference to Manuel. Jeremy notes on his inability to beat "Gosu Night elf players".

As of January 22, 2008 Grubby's previous clan 4Kings disbanded, and a few days after that Grubby was offered a place in MYM. The team MYM which contains Moon and Lucifer and other top players now acquired yet another powerhouse, making the team seemingly indestructible.

- Wikipedia

Grubby is a player that is wanted by most teams, not just for his Warcraft skills. He is a positive influence to his team mates, a great motivating force, and a good friend to all. A few posts ago, I posted one of his articles and for those of you who did not read it, please do! It's titled "Fickle Balance". Ignore the technical details of Warcraft and you shall witness your common misconception of what a "geek" pro-gamer is being blown to smithereens. His eloquence is obvious and exhibits thoughtfulness and maturity despite playing "Orc" which is deemed to be a disadvantage at the highest level of gaming.

But today is not a day for me or any of us to glorify Grubby. I doubt it will be the case any other day. In about 10 years, many of us would have forgotten him. Nevertheless, this game of his will remain. For those of you who have a copy of Frozen Throne 1.21, I assure you that your time will not be wasted in watching the imba-ness that is exhibited in the game that is downloadable below.

Click Here to download "THE GAME"

If you do not see what is amazing about this game, please let me know, ask me questions, and I will give you what I hope will do justice to the great masterpiece, an explanation. As someone who watches replays all the time, I can say that I have watched hundreds of Grubby's games and never before have I seen him play like that. He was truly in the zone. With all being said and done, I hope that you can enjoy this as much as I have and if you think I am being a geek for thinking so highly of what is "just a computer game" to you, as they say in New Jersey, "Suck my balls!"

New Year? New Day? New Beginnings? Pssfftt...

One of the biggest jokes of the year is the New Year. People begin the new year saying things like "This is the new year, I have a chance to start anew" or make ridiculous resolutions that they know they won't keep. The new year is just a new day. If we are ever begging so hard for an opportunity to change, why wait for the new year? To push it to the extreme, why even wait for a new day? If you want your 6-pack abs, or that elusive 24-inch waist-line, or the discipline to be a "good" student, or sleep with at least five guys this year, or find your dream guy, or to save enough money to travel the seven seas, why do you have to wait for a new year?

Nevertheless, all this is way easier said than done. But as usual, the first step to big dreams is self-awareness. Abraham Lincoln said in his "House Divided" speech in 1858:

If we could first know where we are going and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it

Simply, it means that it is important in every decision process that we know where we are and not just where we are going. We can only know "whither we are tending" if we know where we are. So for those of you who still think you are in your lofty worlds with all these big dreams, I hope that after you have read this, you will re-think where you are, and not just about where you want to go. It is pointless to know where you want to go if you don't know where you are.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a multi-talented writer from Germany in the late 18th-early 19th century added:

What you can do or think you can do, begin it.
For boldness has magic, power, and genius in it.

To translate, in the words of Nike, "Just do it".

Some of you may also remember Celine Dion singing about a new day and NOT a new year. I know that's lame but I am going to use it as an example to drive my points home. Here is a link to that song for those of you who were born too late to know who Celine Dion is:

A New Day Has Come - Celine Dion

If you try to see beyond the mushy lyrics of the song, I think it can be applied out of the context of love as what was intended by Celine. Anyway, here are the lyrics:

A new day has...come

I was waiting for so long
For a miracle to come
Everyone told me to be strong
Hold on and don't shed a tear

Through the darkness and good times
I knew I'd make it through
And the world thought I had it all
But I was waiting for you

Hush, love

I see a light in the sky
Oh, it's almost blinding me
I can't believe
I've been touched by an angel with love
Let the rain come down and wash away my tears
Let it fill my soul and drown my fears
Let it shatter the walls for a new, new sun
A new day has...come

Where it was dark now there's light
Where there was pain now there's joy
Where there was weakness, I found my strength
All in the eyes of a boy

Hush, love

I see a light in the sky
Oh, it's almost blinding me
I can't believe
I've been touched by an angel with love
Let the rain come down and wash away my tears
Let it fill my soul and drown my fears
Let it shatter the walls for a new, new sun
A new day has...come

A new day has...come
Ohhh, a light... Ooh

Hence, we don't have to wait for a new year to make changes in our lives. All we need is a day. My best wishes to you in your future endeavors.

Full Circle

This post is probably long known to be inevitable. My final semester at BU did not begin with a bang, nor did I expect it to. Life as I have come to know it, is only as exciting as we make it to be. It's not that I am not excited about what I need to study for this semester, in fact, I have the three most interesting courses that I have ever taken in my college life. They had to wait until the last semester to give me what I really love to do. But then again, maybe it is because I have only discovered what I love to do during my later college career. Anyhow, my college career is approaching its end and I'd like to think that the first quarter of my life is coming to a close. When I look back at how I have spent my college time, it is inevitable that there are a few kinks here and there. But I think I made the most of the opportunities that were presented to me. I had fun, made some cool friends, did everything a college student is supposed to do. Could I have done more?

Anyway, this is also a period for job hunting and my hopes seem slim. It would seem that the harder I try, the more I have come to realize that the chances of me being hired are not too good. Nevertheless, I have zero doubt about my abilities as a person. I just have huge doubts about how the system works. How can they send a representative and talk to you for about 30 minutes and then they get to decide if you should be recalled for a second interview. Well, but that's how life works and I just have to live with it.

My plans now are to secure a job in Melbourne. I will go there after I graduate and check out the companies and see where I end up. It will be exciting. Life is actually beginning! I have to find my own place, pay for my own food or cook, and pay bills etc. As intimidating as it may seem to some people, it actually sounds exciting and fun. The only thing that is left for me to desire is to be able to do something that I will enjoy. I don't have to love the job or anything, but to be challenged and to enjoy the challenge would be pretty ideal.

I have also realized that I have saved a decent amount of money now and I can afford to buy myself a few presents before I go home. I have also sold off some of my textbooks, some of them even at a profit after using them. I am just that good at sales pitching. What can I say? Hahaha... So my plans are to purchase a camera, a long-term investment for me. I also recently purchased a suit, which cost about 200 USD. According to the people I talked to, that's a good price to pay for it. In fact, it's a bargain.

You could say that I am on a kind of a splurge right now. But after four years of "hard" work, I think I deserve slightly more than a pat on the back and a "Job well done". Besides, I think the camera is more of a shared property between Ern and I.

With all that said, and a quarter of my life gone, I can foresee that this will be a good life. I just know it. Now let's go fall down so that we can learn all the ways to climb back up :)

4K.Grubby: Fickle balance

Fickle balance

Some useful definitions:

fickle adjective 2. liable to sudden unpredictable change; “erratic behavior”; “fickle weather”; “mercurial twists of temperament”; “a quicksilver character, cool and willful at one moment, utterly fragile the next”

balance noun 1. a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.

fickle balance 1+2. a state of equilibrium liable to sudden unpredictable change; “fickle balance”; “a quicksilver strategy, strong and unbeatable and one moment, utterly fragile the next”

Metagame: the strategic analysis of a single strategy, or the most commonly played strategies in any given region of the country, in the hopes of creating a strategy that will be more likely to beat strategies of the original type when played in a tournament environment.

One of the most debated and controversial issues in the Warcraft III scene, is that of balance.

We humans have an irresistible urge to categorize everything that we see. In order to understand new data that we come across more readily, we put these pieces of information in boxes with fitting labels. In this way, we build a vast library in our brains concerning all topics, especially those topics that we are concerned with most in our daily life. For many of us, a game has become part of our routine and often these games require us to study and learn great amounts in order to advance. By organizing the information in our head, we create new neural pathways in our brain for actions we do repeatedly. Calling upon our memories and skills for certain actions will go increasingly faster as we repeat these actions more often. Hence the saying, ‘practice makes perfect’.

We are intent on creating ranks for everyone and everything. I myself have noticed that the majority of people have a strong desire to know at any given point, all year round, exactly who are the top 10 players for each race and which Country produces the best players.

Last but not least, we are obsessed with finding out which race is the strongest and which is the weakest. Game balance comes in to play in our community when people attempt to use facts based on balance to produce a ranking of the races, which they at heart feel most comfortable with.

If Rick’s favorite player is the Undead user FoV then it is unlikely that Rick will be willing to accept arguments that support Undead being the strongest race. This is because FoV’s accomplishments will appear far more convincing to Rick if Undead was the weakest race. FoV would lay a spanking despite the shortcomings of his race, which would then be all the more impressive to fans. Some spectators take this one step further by also attempting to convince everyone else that FoV is constantly fighting against the odds because Undead is the weakest race. However, this attempt is most likely futile as usual (since everyone plays a different race and has different favorite players); it would be good to remember the basic motivation that people crusade against each other on forums.

People are very good at deluding themselves to obtain peace of mind. We do this when faced with concepts we aren’t comfortable with. For example, believing in resurrection to help us accept death is similar in a lot of ways to believing that orc is imbalanced so that we may accept loss, without being forced to admit that the other player is more skilled. Personally I have no problem allowing people their reasons so that they may find peace of mind, so long as people don’t mistake these arguments for irrefutable proof of their claims.

The greatest wisdom can be found by considering all points of view before coming to a conclusion. Which strategy is balanced and which is imbalanced? It seems there is an opinion for every grain of sand in the Sahara Desert and like the sand; they are blown away just as easily with every gust of wind. Indeed, I find that the balance in Warcraft III can be viewed just so: waves ripple through the community with a fresh wind every few weeks and completely shatter our previous suppositions. Those people that stick with their earlier conclusions find themselves outnumbered by the ones who ride the wave, unless their mind stays unchanged until the next wave when a strategy becomes imbalanced – for the second time.

A good example of this wave theory is the Druids of the Talons strategy. It was early 2005 when Moon had chills of despair running down the spine of every Orc player with his unbeatable DotT strategy. Those who did not have the misfortune of meeting the father of the DotT strategy Mr. Moon, would meet one of his many followers attempting to replicate his strategy, and with great success. Orcs were helpless for a year, or longer, against the DotT’s, winning only when the Orc apparently out skilled the Night elf by a huge margin. With no new patch at all, there was a sudden shift of power. A new wave rippled across the WarCraft III community, not because the balance had changed, but the balance as we perceive it.

Was it not after I defeated Moon 3 to 1 in WEG Masters (on Night elf biased maps, no less) that it seemed the DotT strategy had lost its once dominant appeal? It was shortly before the WEG Masters semi finals that players had begun to pick up on playing Druids of the Claw instead. This was a notion that would become all the more attractive after the conclusion of WEG Masters. Orcs were starting to counter DotT strategies all across battle.net, now claiming ‘it’s not hard to play against’, and ‘bears are much more difficult’.

I find that the balance of confidence is often a large influence on the outcome of matches. Don’t be overconfident, but have a firm resolve and believe that you can win as long as you play it right. The confidence of all Orcs increased after I beat Moon in China.

The confidence of Orcs would once again decrease after the figureheads of the race start to lose matches yet again (you’d be surprised how quickly this wildfire of despair spreads if you haven’t seen it!). It is certainly no boost to the morale when I watch Satiini or Satiini clones defeat Lyn 2 – 0 again and again or how Zacard tries to hold his own with the mass of experienced Chinese Night Elves.

Some players become desperate when their fellow race users start to lose; to them it seems impossible to win.

It was only a matter of time before a talented and hard working Night Elf player would pick up the DotT strategy again and play it so effectively that it would create a new shift in the meta-game.

HoT has started playing DotT’s again, not like Moon once had – but a new way. With subtle nuances he has reshaped the strategy just as so many other players reshape existing strategies time and time again. In the end it’s not about an arbitrary truth of how the balance really is. It is in fact a constant shift and waves of the meta-game which has players always trying to stay one step ahead of everyone else.

Many people ask me how to make it to the top. The most important thing is not to get carried away on the waves, on waves of opinions of other people. Only your own opinions matters when you are determining your own luck.

The first step is to get to know your equipment well, your utensils and all the hotkeys of the game.

Secondly you must follow the example set by others, so that you understand the meta-game. Thirdly you must be stubborn, because being on the top means not being just another sheep in the flock.

Lastly I’d like to mention that the real challenge is not the climb to the top, but staying on top once you are there. This is not a static position, but an ever-moving one.

It doesn’t get any easier once you are there.

Source: http://www.esportsglobal.com/articles/1