It turned out that CCCSL is indeed great:  it is well lighted, comfortable, and with lots of fresh air.  Look at the following picture showing one play room upstairs: the solid wood table, the wood pieces and the chair. I bet you would love to play a game or two here if you know a little about chess. What else can you ask for a chess club? Besides, there are seven grandmasters playing in this tournament. As a participant, you may not play with any of them, but at least you can watch them playing if you want.  I‘d say, for chess players, it is a dream to play in the tournament here.

One chess play room upstairs of CCCSL

I also went to the Chess Hall of Fame across street of the chess club during the tournament. I was surprised to see many exciting chess sets such as the one shown below.

One chess set in the World Chess Hall of Fame

Abe’s little brother had a game with Mommy in the skittles room downstairs while Abe is waiting for his next round.

Abe’s little brother had a game with Mommy in the skittles room

I had no trouble to find free parking at a nearby (one block away) street. There’s enough space so that parallel parking’s not required since I did not mind parking a little far away.

I have been back from the trip for several days. I felt the Saint Louis trip more worthwhile as time goes by. It does not matter how you did at the tournament. You are glad you played the royal game at a cool chess playing facility, not at a stale room of some hotel.

On the way back, Abe said the trip was not worthwhile. I suspected he thought he did not have a good tournament, he had some homework waiting for him and the trip was a long drive. But I’d guess he will change his mind later.

“Where?” It seemed Abe did not see any birds on his first try.

“Over there,”

“…Oh, I found it.”

“Just like chess, if you try and try, you may find something (you are looking for).”

By the way, Abe had a lucky day— he scored 3.5 points out of 4.

Today, I asked him what he did differently in that lucky tournament.

“I thought more,” Abe replied.

He had so many school activities this year. Every day, before dinner, he just got home and had no much free time; after dinner, he would do his homework for an hour or more. If he had some time to spare on chess studying before going to bed, I felt I was lucky to ask him.

Maybe there is always time to spare on chess if he looks for it — only if he likes it. Right now, once he finishes his homework, before putting the folder and books aside, he’ll turn on TV and play video games on it. Since according to him, playing video games is a type of relaxation he likes, studying chess is a type of work he’d rather avoid doing, it is reasonable to have some relaxation after doing home work. I cannot define what relaxations are for him.

I know letting him to like chess is more important than looking time and asking him to study chess for a while. Last year, I could ask him to study chess for about 45 minutes every day— not any more.  If he can’t study chess frequently, he’ll have more bad tournaments in future unless he enjoys playing chess and has a more mature mind to play.

After last tournament I told him: “Mistakes are not problems, unless you repeat them.” I hope he’d bother to learn from those mistakes and grow more interests at chess.

Abe went to several tournaments in the past weeks and had so so performances (or a bit worse) . I did not remind him anything like I usually did like “Fight to the end” or “Be patient” before games. I thought he had to learn his own mistakes himself. In addition, “New school year is coming”, negative comments, or not, will be pressure to him, he will surely have less time on chess because of the school, then he could performed even worse. It will be a vicious cycle. I do not want it, I do not want Abe to think chess is boring to him.

So he played in the  Class A section, unexpectedly, he scored three wins and two draws out of the five games, tied for first in his section. Some people asked me why he did so good, I replied he was lucky. In fact, in the past, it happened to him that he lost all games in a tournament, he had his share of bad luck then.  While in this tournament, good luck had been with him.

Good luck or not, most players had a good time. I took a picture before the round two, as you can see, even those kids are having a good time (I think many are excited) waiting games to begin:

Kids are chatting before a round at the chess tournament.

2011 FIDE Continental America's Amateur Chess Championship

After the first day’s games (he scored 0.5 point out of 2), on the way home, he said he’s winning in the second game, then he made a mistake to take the opponent’s  strong piece: a rook in stead of a pawn. After that, Abe said it’s a drawn position. Looked surprised, I asked him “Played like a Child?”

I felt Abe’s not offended since Abe then mentioned Magnus Carsen commented his own lost game to Garry Kasparov “I played like a child” when Magnus was 13.

“I am still a child” Abe added.

Two days later, I have the computer analyzed the game. I asked Abe to have a look at the analysis result: The ending’s not a drawn position, he still has chance to win.

“Oh, the Opposition!” Abe exclaimed after looking at the 1st move.

I remember we watched a video together about pawn endgame (including the technique of Opposition) not long ago.

The chess playing hall is huge, chess players and chess parents are free to walk around to look other player’s games as long as they do not interfere with the players.

One thing funny is I could not watch longer than 5 minutes on Abe’s play in a stretch before I move ahead, mostly to GM’s tables. It is easy to criticize Abe’s lack of concentration after the game. But during the game, when Abe concentrated and tried hard to figure out his next good move, it is so hard for me to watch. It is so tense, I do not know much about chess, but I can count number of pieces and pawns of each side on board. Many times I worried if Abe is down  in material “Hope he can hold the game”; I also worried if Abe is up in material “Maybe the opponent set up a trap, sacrificed some material to go to the checkmate,  Abe will be in trouble soon”.  I do not know if Abe can see me, my presence might boost his spirit to fight on, or distract him. So I said to myself “Abe, try your best.” then I move on.

Many parents have the strong nerves to watching kids playing in tournaments (some tournaments allow spectators), I don’t.  I even don’t know it is good for the kids. Consider most chess parents are much worse than their kids in terms of chess playing strength. No matter you are a chess parent or a chess player, I’d like to hear your opinion on the question: “Is better for chess parents to watch kids playing in a tournament”?

I found an old article about the teenager Gata and his father and a recent article about  his gracious moment at 2010 US Championship. Maybe you want to take a look at both articles.

Go Gata!

So Abe was very excited. He gladly promised to take a ten-minute walk  together outside after next round — We did not have time to take a walk right now since next round would begin in fifteen minutes.

It’s cloudy as we found after stepping outside the chess playing room, but still it’s Spring time.  The air’s fresh and grass green. Noticing not far in front,  a goose strolling leisurely across the side walk, wagging his tail behind him,  Abe said: “Maybe he is lost.”

“Lucky for him, at least he is outside.” I replied, even not sure what I meant.

Since 32 players showed up yesterday,  there were enough players for four rounds. Some people withdrew from the last round in order to return home early. Abe played all four games— finished his last game around 8:45 pm. If you plan to play the same events in future, you might want to register early, the chess center can only hold 40 player as I counted yesterday.

USAT North

After one of Abe’s losses, I asked him did he blundered. He said “No, it’s just a miscalculation. I was winning before that.” In fact, a later computer analysis revealed a swing of at least seven pawn values (I thought one pawn value loss could be considered a blunder).

He said he was so scared of sacrifice, I guessed that his miscalculation could be on a bad sacrifice. I told him that there are two options to deal with it. One is to think more to make sure it work. The other is not to take that risk if you are not sure, instead, try to transfer the game into a favorable endgame.

Abe mentioned his sacrifice worked except his opponent got too many compensations. I replied ” You meant that your sacrifice did not work, didn’t you.” I guess if  my suggestions were good,  Abe would knew them already since he read much more chess books than I do. Therefore, he won’t listen to me. A better alternative is, as I hoped, to let him learn from his mistakes.

A chess tournament on a Sunday afternoon

On the way back home, I believe, I heard an interesting story from the NPR, a public radio station. At first, I heard “Tiger Mother”. Oh, more on Pushy Parenting, I thought. Then I heard that this guy’s IQ was estimated to be 50 to 100 points higher than Albert Einstein’s. Then, this guy entered Harvard University at age 11 while being qualified for admission when he was nine. What a child prodigy!  If you are interested to hear the story, click here.

Another first, I was surprised to find out, was Abe achieved being one of last few players finishing the last round. He played for more than four hours in the game. After two hours and a half, I told myself  that I should be happy with Abe’s effort no matter what’s the result. After the game, I thought: “In almost all of previous chess tournaments, Abe always use less then half of the allotted time. Today, I would guess he left the game with only minutes on his clock, and he finally was patient enough to be one of the last few players finishing the round.”

Abe was one of last few players to finish the last round at 2010 Pan America Open

One corner of IL class 2010

Hope you enjoy everything, whether it is  the snow, or it is the tension, whether you are young or you are old.

Talking about something without tension, Abe’s little bother likes to “read” books, but according to Mommy, he only reads the page numbers. However, he still looks enjoying it:

Two brothers enjoy reading in a Costco store

Whatever you do, try to enjoy it, even you can’t grasp everything of it.

We are on the way to our vacation, will be back after Christmas.

Have good Holidays, why not.

1st NA Amateur Closed was held at the North Shore Chess Center

Abe was playing in the tournament, so were two other kids of his age. I bet they had a good time (which is very important to their interests in chess). The three kids are playing blitz between rounds:

Kids play blitz between rounds

Before the last round, I drove the kids to a nearby park, so they played soccer for a while:

Kids play soccer in a nearby park

By the way, one of  the purposes of this tournament is to help people get a FIDE rating and thus create more FIDE rated players in Chicago.

You can find more about this tournament from http://www.nachess.org/naca-news/2010/11/ and  http://www.facebook.com/ChessCenter.

As Abe’s rating jumps and dives, I know that there are apparent weaknesses in his game, it needs time and experience to fix them. For example, as more than one person mentioned, Abe needs improve his endgames. But if not slowing down and not playing with strong opponents, as i understand, you might not have any experience playing the endgame. Abe slowed down a lot recently, and I prefer him to play with strong opponents, even most games results in losses.

In the past several tournaments, I said “good job” to him after each of Abe’ loses, he slowed down, put a good fight and I was happy for him.

I couldn’t agree more. “Win or lose, I don’t care. Just keep playing.” Yes, as a chess dad, I want to tell my son the same thing and, “If you win, it is good and you are lucky. if you lose, it is fine, you will learn more by analyzing your game.”

An interesting position in a chess game

The above picture showed that an interesting position was reached in a game of the tournament, Abe was playing white, he lost the game in the end. When I pointed him a late blunder analyzed by computer software, he replied,” How could I miss that, I must have messed up my notation.” — OOPS.

I was asked by the organizer the night before the tournament, if Abe could play the double round robin section— a little stronger than the single round robin section—due to some conflicts. My intention for the tournament was to see if Abe could play slow. A little stronger did not matter, or quite the opposite, maybe it’s a little better if Abe took opponents more seriously and hence slow down his games. I felt Abe has passed the stage that he would be very upset to his losses to stronger opponents. In fact, Abe performed better on those occasions. So “No problem.” I said.

The round robin tournament was held in a very nice hotel near our home. There were six people in Abe’s section, everyone plays with each of  other opponents, so five games in a weekend, then switching color, five games in another weekend of next month.

The tournament was held in a well-lighted room in a nice hotel. I could watch Abe's games through the big windows

Abe used more than half of times allocated (Game in 90 minutes if ignoring the time increments) in 4 of the 5 games. I was quite happy to his performance in general. He slowed down and took time to think. He scored 1.5 points out of 5. Considering his opponents are all higher rated than him, it is a fine performance. We even had a small celebration, not for winning or drawing his games, but for he played slowly. I told Abe “Hope it  remind you to slow down.”

Today I heard that Vietnam top player Le Quang Liem (2694) lost to Botswana player Kheto Phemelo (2266) in the first round of Chess Olympiad. The reason that a 2200+ player could win over a 2700 player will be scrutinized by many. I think since anyone can make mistakes in chess, it is important be patient to take advantage of your opponent’s mistakes. “You could play better when you slow down.” as I told Abe many times.

He did so poor in the Illinois Open held in the labor day weekend, after a couple of losses, I told him, “I don’t care you win or lose, I will be satisfied if you take your time.” One day on the way to lunch, I explained to him ” when I say take your time, I mean take your time to think or to take a nap if you want to as long as you don’t snore.”But he only took my advice for one game, he blitzed his game again the next one and lost. After the game, I told Abe, “You made me angry! You blitzed again.”

I think I started to ask him to slow down more than a year ago, at least from this post in January. But Abe’s bad habit’s not been fixed. Fixing the old habit might take much longer than a year. Back home, Abe said to me, “I am sorry (I did not listen your advice to slow down), but you have to deal with it.”

When you do it yourself, some assistance, mostly computer software, is needed to point out what is wrong in your game. I have some chess computer software, but Abe does not bother to play with it. So often it is I doing the game analysis, and then Abe is asked to have a look at the results – which I do not think it is productive. Moreover, I was told not to put too much faith in the computer analysis, since it is mainly good at tactics, bad at positional chess.

I always want Abe to analyze his game with a strong opponent or a master on site at tournaments. But most of the time Abe would not do that, he would rather to play with some other little kids on bughouse, video games or others. It made me angry sometimes, but I could not find a better way other than let it be after several failed attempts to ask him to do others.

Game analyses, I think, still was very important to the past several better performances Abe had in chess. The teacher of the scholastic chess club Abe often went took the extra steps analyzing several his games, either to the whole class or to him semi-individually. Not only it increased Abe’s knowledge in chess, but also it boosted his confidence – very important in chess; Abe also fortunately have one hour’s private lesson with a GM this February because of Abe’s good luck in a raffle last year at the National Youth Action. The grandmaster told him to start to learn some endgames and play more often with strong opponents, those advices had been my guidance for selecting Abe’s chess books and chess tournaments.

Being weaker than Abe in chess from the very beginning, I can only offer my advice to him to slow down (or take his time) in every tournament so far. It is my hope that a private coach could help him analyze his game and pointing out his weakness, not in a too general term like my “to slow down”. Two days ago, he had his first lesson with the coach, and he felt very good about it. So did I.