I began playing chess at the age of 6. That year my dad starting taking me to the chess club in Ormskirk in the upstairs room of the Nag’s Head pub where I had the fortune to meet John Littlewood and to be trained together with Gary Quillan by Steven Berkley. After moving to live in Hong Kong at the age of 12, as well as learning Chinese Chess, I started to play more seriously in national competitions. I had the good luck to win the Hong Kong Junior Championship in 1987 and happily represented the country in the 1988 World Junior Championship in Adelaide where my performance rating was FIDE 2305.I started a school chess club and did weekly coaching while trying to pass my A-level exams. While doing my PhD studies, I opened the St. Andrews chess club and trained up a team to compete in the Scottish A-league. I returned to competitive chess again in October 2008 and my rating is now FIDE 2013. In October 2009, I organised the Athens Chess Festival and brought the Women’s World Champion GM Alexandra Kosteniuk to Greece to give her first simul in Athens. You can follow my chess career below.
