I'm going to be honest. This team will have zero chance of top 6. Here are the reasons.

1. 3 friendly matches of 12 games, the national team score 4win 1 draw and 7 loses(4loses are B class and below). Let me remind all that the national was just 2 month plus ago and claiming that they are not in form is not a good excuse.

2. Lack of International experience. Beside xiaobeidou, the other 3 are 1st time representing.

3. Lack of chess strength. Beside xiaobeidou, the 3 class A players are not any clear stronger then any of the other class A players in the country.

4. Team like China, Taiwan, Macau, vietnam, West Malaysia and Hongkong will more probably fill up top 6 seat. Thailand, Indonesia, Phillipines and East Malaysia are no push over either.

Although I feel a little disappointed with the performance of our national team in the recent friendly matches, I believe this is not the time to pressurize any player to quit. Rather, we suit try our best to help our players to do well in the competition. Like what I did was to annotate some of ruizhan's games and point out his weakness in non mainstream opening so that he can work on it. Although I do not think that our national team will get into top 6 this year, I do hope they inflict a few upsets to those traditional strong team.

I feel that once the rules are set, be it selecting the representatives with 7 or 9rounds, we should not change them last minute. However, if this year Singapore do not do well. I hope xiangzhong might want to review the selection criteria. Actually I think that the selection method used 2 years ago was quite good. If this year Singapore do not do well, its not the fault of the players, but the fault of SIXGA and coach.