Toronto Chess News

21
Outside of chess, I am an avid reader as well with much of my recent interest revolving
around books on sports and business performance. Recent reads along this line include
“Rasmus Ankersen’s “The Gold Mine Effect” which explores the phenomenon of centres
of excellence especially related to sports, Mike Babcock’s “Leave No Doubt” and Sam
Sheridan’s, “The Fighter’s Mind”. I enjoy reading books on poetry and philosophy as
well as classic works of fiction by great authors. I have been influenced greatly by Tony
Robbins and his books and audio offerings and also the books of Vernon Howard. I
occasionally indulge in reading fiction by authors like Stephen King or Jeff Lindsay (of
Dexter fame).
I was involved in martial arts for much of my early life including judo, karate and later
aikido. A back injury curtailed that part of my life though it continued to influence me.
An interest in Chinese and Japanese martial arts led me to books like Sun Tzu’s, “Art of
War”, Miyamoto Mushashi’s “Book of Five Rings” along with Machiavelli’s “The Art of
War” and “The Prince”.
My education includes a Masters degree in business with undergraduate degrees in
business and psychology and a diploma in electrical -electronic engineering technology.
I spent just over five years teaching undergraduate business finance at the University of
Windsor in the early 1990s. At the same time I was running a computer consulting
business and playing a fair bit of chess often in team play in Detroit with Milan
Vukadinov, Ray Stone and Brian Profit and later Meng Lou as team mates. Team play
has been a big factor in my enjoyment of chess both in high school and later. Watching
how the kids enjoyed playing in Detroit last weekend in the Michigan Team
Championship I see some potential for increasing chess interest by using this in our own
efforts to market chess. The Windsor kids just won two first place trophies out of the
three team sections that they entered in the Michigan Scholastic Team Championship last
weekend. Many of the kids won trophies. The youngest K-3 children all six years of age
and mostly beginners finished in sixth place despite only having four kids on the team
which counted the top four scores. I predict that next year they will challenge for first. If
we could stop losing the older kids we might be able to sweep the categories which go up
to grade 12. I received a lot of enquiries about my online chess coaching availability.
Most of my life outside of chess has been spent in the IT field where I have been doing
everything from networking, setting up servers to computer and network diagnostics and
sometimes repair. One of my most enjoyable jobs was when I worked as a software
specialist at a local distributor of factory automation hardware and software (Electrozad).
That job was a mix of sales and troubleshooting problems with automation software and
helping customers get software and hardware working properly.
I still do IT work but haven’t been actively seeking it out though it has occasionally been
actively seeking me out. It does pay better than chess but money is not everything. I am
having lots of fun as a chess coach and organizer.
Toronto Chess News