Maurice Ashley, the Jamaican-born International Grandmaster of  Chess, recently discussed the journey to success at the Terra Nova Hotel in Kingston. Speaking to a varied group of  local chess enthusiasts, Ashley used his extremely lucid,straightforward and humourous delivery to inform and inspire.

  In explaining Chess Preparation he gave four main methods. 

     Annotate your own games deeply. Sounds simple but how many people really look at themselves in the mirror ? Without breaking it ? Ashley stressed not just recording your games but deeply analysing them also so that your weaknesses and strengths can be understood. He also advised that we have a friend review our annotations. This segued nicely into his next point.

    Have a training partner. Working with someone else will improve both of you. In any competitive field there is a tendency to want to be secretive and keep your best ideas to yourself but what you may lose to your partner is greatly outweighed by what you'll gain.

Although recognizing that a trainer exclusively devoted to improving your game would be ideal, Ashley said that having a training partner is the next best thing, and more realistic, for non-professionals. Maurice Ashley's training partner was Josh Waitzkin, the prodigy, who was the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer.

    Study good Chess books. In Ashley's opinion about  90% of chess books are total rubbish and will not improve your game. He emphasized that top quality books, such as those written by Mark Dvoretsky and John Nunn, be carefully studied. He also had high praise for the books of John Watson and Alex Yermolinsky. The Grandmaster also mentioned that the Endgame should be studied deeply and that Thematic tournaments were a good way of gaining opening knowledge.

    Use Top Quality Computer Software. Once again the key point here is that the very  best should be used. Ashley said that while many programs, such as Chessmaster, would be very entertaining for amateurs, the top players will eventually want to benefit from the database and analytical power of ChessBase. Maurice Ashley said that Fritz6 and Junior could be used to discover theoretical novelties.

       Maurice Ashley then answered questions from the audience and performed a simultaneous exhibition demonstrating the effectiveness of his methods.