Back in January 2011, our founder, Zeke, went to a chess tournament in Chicago. There was a book vendor there selling chess books and other chess equipments to people at the tournament.  While Zeke was browsing chess books, a guy came in and asked the vendor,

“Do you accept used chess books? I have a lot at home.”

“No, I just sell new chess books except a couple in Like New condition.” The seller replied.

Overhearing the conversation, Zeke thought to himself: “That guy must want to sell his used chess book to the vendor instead of letting those chess book sitting in some book shelves collecting dusts.”

“I have spent hundreds of dollars buying chess book last year alone. Like many other chess players, we love to collect chess books. In fact, however, some books had been read only once, many are not finished. On the other hand, chess books are expansive; it would be a shame to waste the chess books collecting dusts,” Zeke continued with his thought. “It would be a good idea if I can supply a platform so that more people can read chess books and put his/her used chess book in good use.”

So Reapot Inc. was founded —based on that idea.

The mission of Reapot is:

Reapot.com is an online chess book rental store. As customers, no matter you are chess players, chess parents, chess educators, chess organizers or just hobbyists in chess, you can rent all chess books you want from Reapot.com. We hope we can help to nurture your passion and fulfill your goal in life by supplying an affordable, convenient and innovative service.

“Rent all the chess books you want! And receive free months by buying or donating chess books.” is acclaimed on Reapot website. After you join as a member (not as a free guest), you can rent as many chess books as you want (although there is a limit on how many books you can rent each time, there is no limit on how many times you can rent). You can buy the books you rented and/or donate your own chess books to receive free months.

Please check Reapot (www.reapot.com) out, even you don’t want to rent books right now, you can still build your wish list of favorite chess books with a free guest account . Please let me know if you agree with the ideal and practice of Reapot.

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.

To make the chess more competitive among all choices teenagers may face, I would think the following improvements are needed, so chess teenagers still keep an interest on chess and keep playing in chess tournaments:

• Emphasize Change. It will attract more younger kids to play chess when educators or parents know that chess is beneficial to the development of intelligent, chess can help the kid’s performance in school and beyond. Now for bigger kids, this emphasize may not work anymore, on one hand, they are already very smart in school and do not new incentive to be any smarter, on the other, there are many popular activities to choose. So I think the new emphasize should be “chess is a royal game”. Many people like it because they are up to the challenge.
• Since “chess is a royal game”, chess scene should be clean and fair. People with more love and put more work in chess should be able to achieve more success or recognition among chess community.
• Since “chess is a royal game”, many, if not most, people should hold chess in high regard. There should be a large fan base to follow chess.
• More colleges – hopefully, large or small, public or private, could supply chess scholarships or some kind of rewards for chess achievements at the admission process. So kids and parents can have additional incentive for continuing involvement in chess in high school.
• More sponsors to chess professionals. These chess professionals could put more time on chess, less time to worry their lives.

How do you think?

“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.

He said he was just lucky going this far in the tournament but he missed his chance to get the top prize. I told him that the same tournament: Susan Polgar World Open for Boys and Girls would come back next year. “You can have another shot next year.” I said, “But you’ll have to improve yourself, you cannot depend on luck alone.”

“No, I won’t, everyone else will improve.” Abe replied.

I knew I didn’t need to say much and Abe would figure out the answer.

“Let him cry a little more if he wants.” I thought.

The tournamnet is about one week from now, you can register online at http://www.polgarworldopen.com/

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.

On one hand, I think I should give the whole cash prize to Abe since he earned it from chess tournaments. He earned the money and he should be able to decide how to spend it. If your kids play for chess, from time to time, on some lucky days, the kids may earn some cash prizes. The cash prizes make the kids excited. He or she might show off to the friends: something he or she truly “earned”. It is one of exciting moments in long hours’ chess playing.

On the other hand, from my experience, I think Abe might not spend it wisely if he spend all or most of the amount on his will. So I took some time to figure out how to “spend” the money. When Abe found out the envelope for the cash prize letter, he asked me “Where is the check? I want to have a look.”

I gave him the check and told him how to spend it. He said OK and run to show the check to Mommy and his little brother.

The next day, I and Abe went to a brokerage firm to open an investment account. We deposit most of his prize. I gave the rest to him. I told him, on future such occasions, I will give him one third of the cash prize he earned right away, and deposit and invest the rest. He will own the account and the money in it once he becomes an adult.

I know a little about investment as I know a little about chess, in fact I wrote some posts on them. I know it is very important to start early in the investment. I hope Abe can start early and learn a little on investment by opening his investment account. In addition, the whole thing might be one form of training on delayed gratification. It would be best usage for Abe’s cash prize earned from chess tournaments. Wouldn’t it?

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”?

You may want to check Andi Rosen’s beautiful article about Boris and Tamara on USCF website. I agree 100 percent with the article.  She is a second mother or grandmother to many local chess players — Abe included,

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.

One thing he’s improved, as I saw in the last two tournaments, is his concentration level. He probably learned his lessons from several of his recent very bad tournament performances. I asked him taking a shower and a nap in his hotel room between the rounds. We used to go back our hotel room watching sports news on TV. I thought the new change should help him at a higher concentration level during the games. In addition, our hotel room was about one mile away from the tournament site, we have walked back to hotel twice. Being able to walk outside in Spring  helped Abe having a good mood and being lucky.

We had a good time, so are many others, I believe. In the chess playing hall, one thousand kids competing under one roof!

About one thousand kids playing at the 2011 National Junior High Championship

Many top junior players in the state compete at the chess center

Abe continued his bad performance this month. In fact, Abe did not play that quickly in several of his games, while he lost them at the end anyway. As I thought the patience was very important in chess games, for a while, I’d been telling him that I would be satisfied “if he slows down no matter he wins or loses his game”. So, I tried to find some positive sides of his games and could not criticize his loss much.  However, I did notice that although he slowed down, he spent more time looking around at other games including setting his eyes long and often on his neighboring board. When I told him that, in several instances I watched, he had a better position or material advantage and later careless mistakes cost the games again and again, he seemed agreed. He said he was so easily being distracted.

“He must have been lack of concentration,” I guessed. “Maybe he was tired, he usually spent all of his energy in playing in parties or in playing video games.”

Next weekend, he will test his patience and concentration again playing in another tournament. “He must not get too tired before that,” I thought. “But it’s Spring Break next week!”

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.

What an opportunity it’s to join the lecture by a world elite chess player who is, at the same time, highly successful academically in a LOCAL chess club! I might not understand her games in the Women’s World Championship, as a chess parent, however, I was eager to know her growth and advices on parenting chess kids.

Last Saturday, Abe and I went to the lecture. As it turned out, part of her lecture on the games in the championship was very enjoyable, even to me. I felt all the audience, both kids and adults, were engaged and amazed by her lecture. On advices giving to parents, she said, based on her own experience, parents might want to study together with kids at beginning. Later on, parents should put a faith that the kids can be on themselves and  let kids have more freedom. Lufei said, even now days, she still got many advices from his dad, she usually disagree on many of them, but some are useful. She said, her dad might be equivalent to a Class B player. I thought: ” His dad is much better than me, I probably is a class H player at my peak. Abe might disagree more than many of what I’d say later.”

A lecture by Lufei Ruan

On the way home I listed to Abe somethings I learned from the lecture such as “do not play passively” “Always try to win” and “endgame is important”; I asked Abe what I missed. “Do not create (too many) weaknesses.” he added.

Before the last round of the tournament

The tournament was held in a university student center. At first, it seemed crowded. Actually, it’s not a bad place. There were rooms and seats for all the waiting parents and siblings. Nice.