From my point of view, the processes of being a successful person aren’t simple, effortless, and trouble-free things. In short, I am sure that most people will have an opportunity to face those
challenging and hard-time moments in numerous variations of stories, situations, and chapters in their lives.

The same goes for me, I also had a personal experience like them which had been the most unforgettable and cherishable memory that will continuously lurk and rewind in my mind most of the time. Do you know what was that? Yes, the journey was about the hardship of struggling to become a quintessential chess player in three different stages mainly on the school, state, and national levels. So here, I’m going to share with you guys the details of my story meticulously in this blog post today. Stay tuned!

           First and foremost, I didn’t expect that I would be involved to be part of the official team in my primary school chess club since I was 10 years old. On this beginner level, all my classes were just focused on basic things such as how to move the pieces, implement the general rules in all tournaments, write the correct notations, check the pairing, calculate the points, definite a winning, losing, and draw position, set up the clock and more. After the lessons, we were paired by our teacher to have two or three matches before we went back home. Sounds enjoyable right? However, there were always constraints and obstacles that frequently appeared when I already moved into the intermediate phase.

               After several years in this field, I have been through hundreds of specific and systematic drills from my coach, Mr. Azrul almost every weekend. Honestly, I could admit that he was very proficient in the world of chess due to his personal International Chess Federation (FIDE) rating which has reached 1900, always performing as a champion player in each tournament, and also experienced teaching chess for a decade. Thus, getting personal coaching from someone expert was quite costly. Could you imagine that your parents forcibly needed to allocate a high amount of money just to assist you in gaining good quality services? And it was RM1500 per month? If I were my father in this situation, I rather think about it twice or even thrice. It was because somehow, I could say that money is not everything, but everything needs money. If my beloved mother and father hadn’t strived hard for me, there would never have been a chance for me to attain more deeper comprehension of chess understanding which consists of many important parts like the knowledge of tactical puzzles, endgame studies, opening repertoire practice, positional exercises, game analysis, and others.

Besides, he also gave me plenty pieces of advice on how to be a real caliber and competent indoor athlete. For instance, he said that a perfect rigid drill schedule would also help me a lot mainly in aptitude empowerment of critical thinking and creativity. To illustrate, Mr. Azrul usually consulted me to find more sparing matches either via face-to-face or online chess games daily to beef up my consistency and performance in every single round. Although it was personally heard as annoyance and tedious, I still tried to learn how to manage my time properly including the time to finish homework, help a family to do some chores, and more.

 In addition, Mr. Azrul also highlighted the right and healthy food for me to consume by following the pyramid of nutrition. In this case, I would never be able to eat my favorite junk foods and snacks such as instant noodles, chocolates, fries, burgers, carbonated water, and all of them especially when the tournament day was close! In the same way, my mother would cook one green vegetable dish just for me each lunch and dinner time. Consequently, Mr. Azrul explained that having wholesome foods that have a high content of fibers would offer the best conservation of nervous systems to stimulate the proactivity of brain functions. In brief, the good capability of impulse conductions would make a high improvement in player concentration and energy while playing the game. From there, I was led to start eating healthy foods even though I didn’t like it so much.

Furthermore, Mr. Azrul also kept reminding me of a single quote from a famous Norwegian Chess Grandmaster, Magnus Carlsen who said, “If you want to get to the top, there’s always the risk that it will isolate you from other people.” Initially, I never understood what my coach tried to talk about. But after I firmly decided to become more serious and serious in this kind of sport, I was vulnerable to many groups of people who always brought a negative aura and unmotivated words around me. Some of them said I would never survive till I succeeded. On top of that, my big family also told me that it was a worse thing. Then, they asked me to stop engaging in any chess activities immediately because of my awful reputation in examinations at that time.  In addition, when my school announced that I was a champion title holder in one of the random tournaments I joined, they would suddenly claim that they were the real supporters and instantly forget what they had said to me once I was in a hard time. Not only that, but my friends also condemned my attitude which seemed to have changed from asceticism to arrogance when my name started to become popular day by day. I was like, seriously? How could I surpass all the problems instantly? And how could I shut their mouths up to prevent the situation from becoming terrible and terrible in the future? Well, I believed that God’s plans would always be the best.

Practice makes perfect. When I was 12, I had a chance to prove my ability to play as a great chess player at Melaka School Sports Council (MSN Melaka) in 2017. After doing it well, I achieved a gold medal in the Man Under 12 Category which made me deserve to go play at the National Level called Malaysia School Sports Council (MSSM) in Oktober for the same year at Pahang. Then in 2018 and 2020, I got double bronze medals in the Man Under 15 Category which qualified me as a Melaka advanced athlete to play at Terengganu and Kuala Lumpur at that time. Additionally, I have been to Miri, Sarawak to compete in the FIDE Rated Tournament to enhance my current ratings and skills as well. Besides, I also joined other tournaments whether it was classical, rapid, or even blitz games in almost all states in Malaysia such as Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Johor, Negeri Sembilan, and so on. Lastly, I have often received a call from some schools to be a moderator of a chess seminar program to spread the bits of knowledge and encourage them to become a champion as I do. Did it sound cool and fascinating? Yeah, it did.

Undoubtedly, playing chess has significantly affected me, especially in my daily routine life. As you can see, chess also taught us how to cultivate moral values to accomplish better self-esteem instead of playing. For example, I could learn how to manage time perfectly, build new relationships with strangers and make them our friends, I would able to generate other side incomes, inculcate the spirit of teamwork and dependability in myself, and more. Now, my status of being a professional chess player is almost there. Clearly, if I keep bending over backward on my consistency and discipline in every single training, I will ensure that my aims become reality whenever I should.  Overall, I hope that my sharing for today will give you some new information. Remember, success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence. Okay then, see you on the next topic, Bye!