By Efstratios Grivas

China, the proud winner of the last Olympiad (Tromso 2014 - Open Section) opened its doors to the training system of the FIDE Trainers’ Commission (TRG) for the very first time. FIDE hadn’t been able to organize an official FIDE Trainers’ Seminar in this huge country until now, but finally, after long discussions, the two partiess were able to fruitfully cooperate.

With the kind sponsorship of the Asian Chess Federation, FIDE and TRG can now be proud of having organized seminars in nearly every major country of the world!

The seminar was held in Zhongshan in the Seele Boutique Hotel, which is located in Zhuhai, northern China. It was co-organised by the FIDE, the Asian Chess Federation (ACF), the FIDE Trainers’ Commission (TRG) and the Chinese Chess Association (CCA).

Asian Chess Federation President His Excellency Sheikh Sultan Bin Khalifah Al-Nehyan	Asian Chess Federation Secretary General & UAE Chess Federation Board Member (Delegate) Mr. Hisham Al Taher	Trainers’ Commission Secretary & Lecturer - Technical Director of the UAE Chess Federation (GM-FST-IA-IO) Mr. Efstratios Grivas

This 30-hour seminar spanned five days from October 31st to November 4th, 2014 with no fewer than sixty trainers participating (55 from China, four from Chinese Taipei and one from Hong Kong), breaking the previous record of 54 participants! Among them, there were three GMs, two IMs, one WIM, one WFM, one FM and one CM and many other strong players and experienced trainers. Furthermore 30% of these trainers were women, though it is true that China has never been short of strong women chess-players and trainers! Who can forget that the FIDE Women World Champion is the Chinese prodigy
Hou Yifan…

The Lecturers were GM/FST/IA/IO Efstratios Grivas (Greece), who is also the Secretary of the FIDE Trainers’ Commission (TRG) and the Technical Director of the UAE Chess Federation and GM/FST/IO Jiangchuan Ye who is also the Vice-President of the Chinese Chess Association (CCA) and Commission Member of TRG (China-Assistant).

The schedule and list of topics covered:

Efstratios Grivas explains an interesting case again and again until it is understood

Judgement Day (Exams) in the morning in Zhongshan on the ninth Floor of the Seele Boutique Hotel

The view from such a high building is always awesome

A good breakfast always helps the mind work faster and more efficiently. The exams are
about to start.

And here we go: everybody was a bit worried and stressed

Three of the four members of the Chinese Taipei delegation

Jiangchuan Ye supervised and conducted the exams

List of the graduates

The two TRG lecturers: Jiangchuan Ye and Efstratios Grivas

And as is custom, here is the ‘family’ photo - the two lecturers in the centre surrounded
by the happy trainees

Something to be noted is that the TRG Training System, which started approximately 10 years ago, has now certified 3051 trainers around the world. Number 3000 was the Hong Kong attendee Ms. Aron Fung and she was presented with a nice gift - congratulations!

Well, everything run smoothly and more or less everyone was happy to learn something more in training and obtaining certification on his/her level. Proper chess-training is a bit more difficult than it sounds and trainers have to improve their level. Concluding this report, I would like to thank the Chinese Chess Association and its President Mr. Junan Yang and my Assistant Jiangchuan Ye, who proved once more his great training abilities.

And finally the Zhuhai Chess Association and the organizer Ms. Liang Zhihua and the member of the Secretariat Department of the CCA and English translator, Ms. Li Kaimin. I would certainly love to return to this historical, beautiful country.

Organizer Ms. Liang Zhihua and Jiangchuan Ye at the Tromso Olympiad (warm thanks
to Zhaoquin Peng for the photo)