GM Kevin Goh Wei Ming is the seven- time champion of Singapore, and is a renowned opening theoretician who wrote Chess Developments, Sicilian 6. Bg5 Najdorf, and has published many articles for ChessPublishing.com.
This year, Kevin earned the GM title at the relatively late age of 36 while working full time as the CFO of an oncology company! As Kevin tells us, earning the title was the culmination of a 10 year quest, which involved many setbacks, much travel and time off from work and an indispensable support network of friends, family and a few GM mentors. Kevin’s inspiring story is full of good chess improvement advice no matter what title or rating you may be chasing. You can find many more details of our conversation and the related links and timestamps below.
02:00- We begin by discussing the current state of Coronavirus and chess in Kevin’s native Singapore, and the Chess against Covid initiative that Kevin and some friends of his recently started.
Mentioned: Chess against Covid initiative, Junior Tay, Olimpiu Urcan (see his great Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/urcan ), GM Rustam Kasimdzhanov
8:30- Kevin walks us through his long journey to the GM title, which has been a nearly a decade-long quest as well as the highlight of his chess career.
Mentioned: IM John Bartholomew
14:00- Once Kevin decided to pursue chess full time, what study routine did he implement?
Mentioned: Perfect Your Chess, IM Erik Kislik, GM Gyula Sax, see Gyula-Sax-Kevin Goh 2011 here:
https://share.chessbase.com/SharedGames/share/?p=N1Q2wYdh/tNWwlrJVxBDAkPiax9hdmoywl1jMwd0KJF0mYtLI6YQ7V3O/cExPR3z
Secrets of Spectacular Chess by GM Jonathan Levitt and FM David Friedgood, GM Daniel Fernandez, Chessbase India feature on Kevin Goh by Junior Tay here: https://chessbase.in/news/Dressed_to_Impress_How_IM_Kevin_Goh_prepped_and_persevered_for_his_final_GM_norm, Episode 178 with IM Kare Kristensen
36:00- When Kevin got his 3rd norm in 2018, he needed just 7 more ELO points for the title, little did he know that these last rating points were far from a formality!
Mentioned: GM Ashwin Jayaram, IM Elect Donny Ariel!, GM Avetik Grigoryan, GM Boris Avrukh, Chessmood.com
49:00- What did it feel like to finally earn the GM title in 2020 after all of these struggles?
51:00- Chessable.com has many excellent “Lifetime Repertoire” courses including ones by GM Jan Gustafsson, IM Christof Sielecki and a brand new one on the Caro Kann, from GM Erwin L’ami. The place to see the all of Chessable’s Lifetime Repertoire courses is here:
https://www.chessable.com/chess-openings/s/lifetime
51:45- What is Kevin Goh’s chess improvement advice for fellow adult improvers?
GM Karsten Muller, GM David Smerdon, GM Tigran Petrosian, GM Anatoly Karpov, Positional Sacrifices by GM Neil McDonald, Karpov-Gelfand 1993: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1048256
GM Jonathan Rowson , IM Willy Hendriks On the Origin of Good Moves, NM Elijah Logozar,
1:08:00- What is Kevin’s opinion and experience with The Woodpecker Method and spaced repetition generally?
Mentioned: GM Hans Tikkanen and GM Alex Smith, Recapping the Woodpecker Method with Neal Bruce , The Road to Chess Improvement. Caruana-Carlsen Game 1 2018
1:14:00- Patreon supporter of the show, FM Andrey Terekhov, writes in to ask his friend Kevin what his next goal is now that he has gotten the GM title.
Mentioned: Aeroflot Open, FIDE Online Olympiad
1:20:00- What advice did GM Jacob Aagaard give Kevin when he was stuck at a plateau?
1:23:00- Thanks so much to Kevin for sharing his story and his wisdom. Here is his contact info:
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/GMkevingwm?__tn__=%2CdlC-R-R&eid=ARAnkjbSRRYN_2CulGTyid0y7WpIDj2QMkJ-wDYtOOFN7ip64ExECRkK2BWZ-uqeSv4gU3bJXgZ7rSR5&hc_ref=ARQT0DEi2WlenxdbN_3NX6qg3_ffFhCYDVGMLIwg9I3xJoAFO0UpEuGwqcO5wrPM8Iw
Twitter- https://twitter.com/kevingohwm
Email- kgwm83 at hotmail.com
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