Does It Pay To Become A Chess Coach?

After reading the Stonemaster's comments here, I went and did some of my own calculations.

I did a 20-year projection on how much money a chess coach/organizer can make compared with a fresh graduate. Of course I had to make certain assumptions.

1. Based on the Stonemaster's figures, I assumed that 100% of his income comes from coaching. Because of that, a chess coach will find it hard to increase tuition fees in the near term. Hence, I allow a 10% upward revision in coaching fees every five years. It is hard to estimate the profits of an organizer because I do not have any data of the costs involved, and many times, organizers depend on sponsorship to obtain profits. In short, I can't calculate what I can't estimate.

2. I assume the Stonemaster does not pay taxes

3. I also assumed that the Stonemaster has already maxed out the number of hours that he is willing to spend on coaching and organizing. This means that he is unable to increase income simply by increasing the number of hours coached. Hence, the increase in income must only come out of the increase in coaching fees.

Table 1 below shows the income projection of the Stonemaster in the next 20 years.

Table 1

On the fresh graduate side, I had to make several assumptions as well. A quick check showed that a fresh graduate can easily get a banking job with a starting pay of RM3,000. Please correct me if I am wrong.

1. Based on this, I assumed that the fresh graduate will get a salary increment of 5% per year for the next 20 years. I think this is on the low side. But let's be conservative.

2. I assumed that the EPF contribution from the employer is 12% of his gross income.  This is standard. This should be handy during your retirement. If you are a chess coach, when are you going to retire?

3. I based the tax rate on the 2010 tax brackets. I used the full gross income as the taxable income. This means that I did not subtract all the deductibles. Once again, trying to be conservative. You can view the tax bracket here.

4. I assumed that the medical and other benefits begin at RM200 per year and will grow at 5% per annum. This could easily be more. Another thing I did not include is that if there is a serious medical condition, the coverage could be more. Even if you are hospitalized, you will still continue to receive income. If you were to be coaching chess, you do not get paid if you are hospitalized. What will you eat then?

5. I assume that no bonuses are paid throughout the 20 years. Again, this is to be conservative. Most banks pay about two months bonus annually. Again, correct me if I am wrong.

Table 2 shows the projection of the fresh graduate's total compensation.

Table 2

For your convenience, here is a chart to show you the rough difference in compensation:


Chart 1

So kids, this is why people do not become chess coaches/organizers. Stay in school and study hard. Unless you REALLY want to become a GM. For that, go to my previous post. 

So Much Hot Air

If you guys have not seen Siew Fai's comment on Jimmy's blog, you probably managed to save about 15 minutes of your life, depending on how fast you can read.

For those of you who are lazy or who are too busy to care what Siew Fai is talking about, let me try to summarize it in a few sentences.

1. Siew Fai does not know how to spell "George Bush".

2. Siew Fai's favorite past time is to sit on the fence (regardless of how painful that is).

3. Siew Fai thinks that he is doing "god's work" (with no offence to any religion) because he has a RM2 million sponsorship just waiting to be splashed upon all chess players like holy water (Read: All of you should listen to Siew Fai because if not, you will never see that RM2 million sponsorship). "Take heed or you shall perish in the name of chess!"

4. Siew Fai thinks he is better than anyone of us because of his negotiations with an arbitrary amount of sponsorship with several zeroes behind it. He has the audacity to insinuate that the Stonemaster may or may not have the RM1 million sponsorship that the Stonemaster is bragging about, using phrases like "no reason to challenge him for validity or being a doubting Thomas-time will tell whether it is true or false".

Whether or not the Stonemaster has a sponsor ready and waiting is the Stonemaster's business to shout about. There was absolutely no reason to bring it in unless you wanted "create doubt". You don't have to be so pretentious in your self-promoting and self-advertizing. We get it. Siew Fai is the chess saviour.

Siew Fai, you have done nothing more than promote yourself and riding along the comment page of chess blogs. At least Raymond has his own blog. I have several suggestions of ways to promote yourself.

1. Create YOUR OWN blog
2. Make a giant billboard with Jackie Chan's face on it and put it beside yours like for Kaspersky
3. Take out a full-page newspaper advertisement (you can include Jackie Chan or Lee Chong Wei as well)
4. Make a TV advertisement
5. Make a radio advertisement

If you need more advice, I suggest you contact a professional PR firm because currently, you have done nothing but paint a very ugly picture of yourself. All we have been hearing is you blowing hot air and more hot air about how much sponsorship you are getting. It's already getting really hot with global warming and all.

If you are truly doing this for the good of chess, why not go ahead and just do it because you don't need to create a name for yourself while you're at it. Report back once everything has been signed, then you will AUTOMATICALLY be a hero.

Otherwise, you have officially lowered yourself to the level of the Stonemaster. Because honestly, only time will tell whether what you say is true or not. We have no reason to question the validity of your statements.

P/S: Try to learn how to write in a clear and concise manner in neat paragraphs. No one likes to read a lengthy, incoherent, poorly paragraphed post. Clearly you have demonstrated your ability to use line breaks in your romantic poem to Raymond Siew. How about you promote yourself in your own blog?

Stonemaster's Secret

Fadli "Stonemaster" Zakaria claims that his big secret to his 5th placing in the Ambank Chess Challenge 2010 is from training with his Super GM level Pocket Fritz. Let us simply examine if his wins warrant his boast and claim about how much he has improved through his Pocket Fritz. Out of the 9 opponents that he played, only Jax was rated higher than him. This is further reflected by his performance rating of 1925, more than 100 points below his actual rating!

What this implies is that he was paired with weaker opponents, and not only that, he performed below his rating level. If you truly want to know his secret, simply look at the players that he lost to. Tan Ken Wei is a rising national junior champion, so I suppose it's OK if Stonemaster loses to him. But the Stonemaster's true secret is his lost to WFM Nur Najiha in round 5!! This allowed the Stonemaster to float down and play 2 players who were rated 600 points below him consecutively.

So the real secret was that the Stonemaster had, planned or otherwise, played against weaker opponents and managed to secure the right amount of points with some come-from-behind victories plus his free Queen that Jax Tham gave him, managed to achieve his brilliant 5th placing. If you go to chess-results.com, you can see the first tie-break, which is presumably the sum of his opponents' scores, he scored a grand total of 46, by far the lowest of the top 9 players in the tournament.

No matter how you see this, the Stonemaster was clearly gifted his 5th placing. There is no magic in his Pocket Fritz. Or is there?