Elementary Nationals Wrap Up and Rant

All over but the cleaning up

I survived another scholastic nationals! Sunday was a great day for the kids. Being a group of inexperienced kids, we didn't have tremendous expectations in terms of bringing back hardware. Saturday night I had looked at the team standings. The K-3 under 800 team was in about 50th place, and the K-5 under 900 team was around 37th place. After a good sixth round for the K-5 team, I looked at the standings again. We were 31st, and only 1.5 points out of 25th. With another good round we had a reasonable chance at moving up. I hadn't even said anything to the kids before the round, except to keep playing slowly and give it their best shot.

I take a very laid back approach when coaching a group like this. I don't have a bunch of parents going on to the USCF MSA to check the real ratings of their child's opponent. I'm not sure any of these kids' parents would even know where to look for ratings. I'm more concerned with the kids having fun, and learning something. Winning a trophy with a group like this is icing on the cake. After the seventh round was done we headed out for dinner. The restaurant was about half way between the convention center and our hotel. There was debate as to whether we should go back to the convention center or not. I was able to contact the coach of the team that we shared the team room with. He sent one of his players off to find out our place. He called back and told me we came in 25th. YES! We had a reason to go back.

It's nice to work with a group like this because then I don't have to deal with the type of crap referred to below. This came off the USCF Issues Forum (One must be USCF member and registered to view) and is written by one of my regular readers whose daughter plays for the team that won the K-5 championship.

Actually, this was my 6th scholastic national tournament and maybe I wasn't aware of it previously but there seemed to be a lot more whispers about cheating than in any previous tournament. I didn't see or observe anything (but I try to stay in the cocoon of our team room most of the time because my kids and I are much happier without the hovering parent thing going on) but I did hear things from several parents from several different schools. Things ranging from kids entering moves on their mon roi before they made them, kids leaving the tournament hall in the middle of games to talk to their parents, kids with notes in their notation books, kids who circled "won" when they lost. I think the playing hall which had an observation area one floor up where parents were perched with binoculars (!) to watch their kids' games may have fed into an overall feeling of paranoia. I overheard someone talking about one family, where one parent was watching the game through binoculars and calling the other parent who was down on the tournament floor with moves on a cell phone, etc. Again, I have no personal knowledge of any actual cheating but the spectre of cheating was in the air like never before and I think it is something that needs to be addressed firmly at future scholastics.

Then in the USCF Chess Tournaments Forum there was this post from a coach.

Well, for the first time in my life I've been accused of cheating. My K-5 U900 team in Pittsburgh was the object of a cheating accusation last weekend. The problem started when, to encourage the kids to play slow, I told them to get up, get water, go to the bathroom, and look at teammates games (always from behind their teammate and never making eye contact) during their games. This way they would not be glued to their chairs and could relax and play slow. Our bright tied-dyed team shirts made it clear in the first round than many of our players listened and did look over teammate's games [ many players did set records for the longest games they'd played in their lifetimes]. Late in the first round one parent of one of my kids opponents was quite upset that teammates were looking at his daughter's game. He also didn't like that other teammates were in the spectator area trying to see what the position was. He confronted me with quotes of "she is playing your whole team" and that I should be ashamed of teaching kids to cheat. Well, I didn't really know how to respond. I knew they were not cheating and when I told him that he didn't believe me.

After the first round I instructed the kids to not look at any teammates games and to take the long way to the bathroom to avoid walking behind a teammate's board. I thought this would be the end of it. When I asked them later they said that they did not look at teamate's boards.

Then during Sunday's morning games I was confronted with another accusation of cheating by the coach for a group of schools and we went to see the floor TD. Then we spent 45 minutes hearing about how a surveillance program had been set up and that one of my kids had gone to the bathroom three times in the last hour. The basic accusation is that my kids were meeting in the bathroom to exchange ideas. The floor TD was very patient but since they could not provide proof (which was impossible since there was no cheating!) and he would not punish us right then, they became very frustrated.

I got to talk for about a minute but it doesn't do any good once some is sure you are guilty. I admitted to telling the kids they could look at the teammate's games. I also said that I told them not to any more but they claimed that we were still doing it. We did have quite visible shirts but there were other similar tie-dyed shirts that a couple of other teams had. I also found out that they had instructed their players to follow our players to the bathroom! When I tried to apologize to the coach of the teams, he said he didn't want to talk to me an walked away.

In the end, I told the kids for the last round to go to the bathroom before the round, limit water intake, and not look at teammate's games. All these are things that are within the rules but I thought that it was better to be extra clean. We had the floor chief TD come to our room and talk to the team for 20 minute before the last round. He said that they could look at teammate's games but I still told them not to. I'm not sure if all the distractions affected the play of our kids in the last round. We did a little worse than I had hoped in the last round and finished 19th.

A lot of this is due to parents who were able to continuously observe their kids play. They then interpret anything out of the ordinary as suspicious. From there it all just feeds on itself to become clear cheating. Once they had set up the surveillance program, only sitting in the chair for three hours would have removed their fears. It is just a real shame to place this level of distrust in the kids. I could have watched my son's games easily from the crosswalk but I could not take the tension of sitting a watching. Overall, it was one of the most depressing and frustrating things in my life! To have people be 100% sure you are cheating without proof is surreal. I was barely able to hold it together when I talked to the team before the last round. I now have 13 schools sure that I've taught my kids to cheat. Personal integrity is important to me but there is not a thing in the world I can do to convince them that they are wrong.

Though I disagree with encouraging kids to go watch teammates' games, there wasn't anything wrong with what these kids did. I tell my kids to stay away from each others games, and stay focused on their own. Somehow I seriously doubt players under 900 could give their teammates any useful information in a trip to the bathroom. This team scored 1 point more then my team. Somehow I don't think it was because their kids were talking about their positions while hanging out by the the water cooler or in the bathroom. Having looked at over 70 games from that section, I seriously doubt cheating was an issue. I think some parents and coaches seriously need to get a life.

Before I got involved with teaching and coaching I used to be a tournament director at many of these scholastic nationals. Being on the floor at events like these is very challenging at times. Often one needs to make decisions that may not be based on normal rules. One needs the wisdom of Solomon when trying to decide where a piece is when there is no scoresheet and the placement of that piece is the difference between winning and losing. One also must be gentle but firm when dealing with a crying child that one is having to rule against. Sometimes we screw up and make the wrong decision at first. We can only hope that when everything is said and done that we get it right in the end.

I remember one elementary nationals where I think there must have been a full moon. The parents and coaches were just going nuts. In between rounds I had gone out for a run with one of my friends who was coaching a small NYC school. We got talking about the nutty parents and we got joking about how to solve the problem. Hold the nationals at an undisclosed location. Tell the parents their kids will be met at the airport and taken to the tournament. They will be taken care of by the directing staff for the entire weekend. When the tournament is over, the kids will be flown back home. No parents to second guess the tournament directors or accuse other children of cheating. Wouldn't that be nice.

I am kidding about the solution, but often when a decision is made on the floor the tournament director and the players involved are able to work everything out. It's when the players go back to mommy and daddy that sometimes the story gets distorted and now the tournament director has a pissed off parent on his back. The parent innocently asks "How was your game?" and now the kid gets all emotional and starts crying. Naturally the parent is going to get upset because he/she thinks their kid has been screwed. Then the tournament director has to go through the whole process over again in order to make the parent understand what happened and why a particular ruling was made. Damn! I don't miss directing at these things anymore!

Monday we had nice train ride back to New York. Any train buffs out there recognize this scene? My little point and shoot doesn't do it justice. This is the horseshoe curve on the old Pennsylvania Rail Road route near Altoona.

What do you when you got 100+ hungry kids from various schools on a long train ride? You call ahead for pizza in Harrisburg. No offense to the good folks in Harrisburg, but nothing tastes like New York pizza. It must be the water.

Good to be home, though I caught a nasty cold. Nasty enough that I was very happy when my opponent in the club championship had too much homework and couldn't make it until next week's make up round. Nasty enough to keep me away from my weekly cracktion fix for another week. This means I'll go for over a week with no rated games. No chess this weekend either!

More Observations From Pittsburgh

Despite the brutal schedule on Saturday, things started looking a little better for the group. Kids that had started off 0-3 finally got some wins. I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to deal with any of the kids going 0-7. Even I haven’t gone 0-7! There have been those 0-5 and ugly .5-5.5 that have happened a few times. I’ve been spared 0-6 or worse.

With the kids that got off to the bad start I make it a point to find something positive in their game no matter how ugly it had been. Sometimes they just feel so bad, especially when the other kids are winning and they're not. I also make sure at the end of my analysis session with the kid to remind him or her what the lesson was that he or she should take from that game. Sometimes it was as simple as when a piece is attacked by a pawn to move the piece. The first few rounds I kept having to remind them that guarding a piece attacked by a pawn is not enough.

Sometimes as a teacher I have to be careful exactly how I explain something, because kids take things so literally. A few weeks ago in class I was talking about a few different things including etiquette. We also were talking about stalemate. During the etiquette discussion I said it’s not a nice thing to keep promoting pawns to queens when one has an easy mate with what’s already on the board. I told them about the obnoxious kid who made 4 queens and was about to make a fifth, when I told him to stop showing up his opponent. I also said that making too many queens could lead to stalemate if the opponent has nothing but a king.

One of my players reached this position and promoted to a rook.
When I asked him why he didn’t promote to another queen, he said “You told us it wasn’t good to take another queen.” I had to explain that wasn’t what I meant. Especially since promoting to queen in that position was mate on the move. It would not have been a big deal, except that he kept missing easy mates in one or two with the rooks and queen and ended out drawing. I suggested to his parents to get him a checkmate workbook so that he could practice queen and rook checkmates and begin to recognize the patterns. Is this a future Knight Errant? (Note: I wrote this before reading the heated discussion regarding the Knight's Errant on Elizabth Vicary's blog. For the record, I think for kids that type of exercise is useful.)

The Parents & Friends tournament was on Saturday, but with a group this size I don’t have time to play in it. By the time the first round started at 10:30, I had over half my players done their 9:00 AM round. Despite my pleas to slow down any game that took over an hour and half was considered long. Our local scholastic tournaments have a time limit of game/45 so game/120 is just beyond their comprehension. It doesn’t matter how I explain how much time 4 hours is they just don’t get it. In one round, one of my players comes back in about a half hour. He tells me he played so fast because his opponent had a clock and wanted to play with it. For some reason the mere presence of a clock makes a lot of inexperienced players think they need to play fast. Part of that may be because when they use a clock at chess club they play 15 minute chess. The other reason is they get a clock put on their game late in a round. In the local tournaments any games without a clock going gets a clock put on with 10 minutes for each when there’s 25 minutes before the next round is scheduled.

I was perfectly happy I wasn’t playing in the event since they held it in the skittles room. There were kids running around playing ball, and some teams were using that area in lieu of a team room. The noise would have made me crazy. One of the New York parents I know was using his iPod to block the noise. I’ve never seen him use an iPod when we’ve played in New York. Also given my track record in the event I didn’t feel like tossing a chunk of the 53 rating points I gained on Tuesday.

I met a remarkable young man named Domingo Santoyo who was playing in the Parents & Friends tournament as brother/player team. He's a 10th grader from Brownsville, TX who was born with no arms. He moves the pieces, presses the clock and keeps score using his right foot. He can move the pieces so quickly with his foot that I couldn't even get the picture fast enough. This picture I took he had just put the piece down and was going to press his clock.

His "footwriting" is neater then some high school kids' handwriting that I've seen.

I got to speak to him briefly afterwards. I wanted to make sure he wouldn't mind my posting some of the pictures. He's very a very easy going kid. I wish I had more time to ask him how he got involved in chess. It seems like all of his family plays or directs scholastic tournaments in Texas. I had to check on my team, and I think he was anxious to see how his kid brother was doing.

National Elementary: Day 2

It's a little after midnight, and the most exhausting day of the tournament is over. The kids play three rounds starting at 9:00 am, and last round starting at 7:00 pm. It's draining for the kids and the parents. By the time I got going through the last bunch of games I was getting punchy. At one point I'm playing the white moves with the black pieces and the black moves with the white pieces and trying to figure out why the score was backwards. Don't ask! I'm not sure I can even explain what I was thinking at that point. Finally I figured out what I was doing, and just started all over again. I guess when I see so many score sheets with notation errors even when it's right I start thinking it's wrong.

Here are a few pictures from today.

The calm before the storm. An empty tournament hall waiting to be filled.

How fast can parents seat their child, and get out of there before the tournament directors starting having to resort to force?

A big part of this tournament is the team aspect, and the pride kids feel representing their school at nationals. Each school has their own way of showing team spirit. The classes at one Oklahoma school each make a poster for the chess team to take to nationals and hang up in their team room. Here are a couple of the posters that the team's school mates made for them.


Many teams have shirts in their school colors that they wear through out the tournament. The shirts give the kids a sense of team identity, and depending on how colorful they are it helps parents and coaches spot their kids. My team wears purple and white. The only problem is, one of the biggest teams from New York City also wear the same color purple, so it's hard to tell at glance who is from which school. Next year I'm going suggest purple tie-dye shirts. The teams with tie-dye shirts were easy to spot.

The most unique team shirts were these shirts being worn by a team from Baltimore. Each kid had a different piece on the back of the shirt with a different motto. A friend of the coach did the art work. These are totally awesome shirts. I thought they had been done by a friend of mine who is also from Baltimore and does similar chess art work, but they weren't.




More pictures to come!

On The Road Again: Pittsburgh, PA

Welcome to Pittsburgh! The city of bridges! There seems to be a bridge on every block. I've been told that Pittsburgh has the most bridges of any city in the Western Hemisphere. From what I can see from the convention center, I can believe it. In this city I guess one has many opportunities to "cross that bridge when they get to it."

Here is a view of the playing floor from the upper level of the convention center. My dumb little point and shoot camera does not do the vast scene justice. There are a lot of tables off to the left that can't be seen. Then there is the K-1 section in the Westin Hotel next door. This scene is very calm. Tomorrow I'll shoot another picture before the round starts when there's hordes of parents and coaches making sure their kids are in the right spot.


As I mentioned in my Junior High Nationals post, I travel with several different schools. For this tournament I am here as the coach for one of the elementary schools that I teach chess at. Working with this group of kids is presents different challenges then the kids from the junior high championships. Dealing with 7th and 8th graders who are very tournament savvy and have several years of nationals experience under their belts is have different issues and needs then 2nd through 5th graders who are for the most part brand new to the nationals scene.

With my junior high group, I'm the assistant coach and much of what I do is simply answer the rules and ratings questions, play chess with them in between rounds so they can try out stuff. Sometimes they just need to curse and vent a bit. My role with that group is technical grunt. Also there are certain non chess issues that one has to deal with when you're talking about teenage boys and girls.

With this group I am the only coach. Their regular teacher has not made the trip with the team the last couple of years. Some of the kids attend my session on Mondays along with the other teacher's session of Thursday. Some of the kids never have attended my Monday class until I insisted that they come so I could at least get to know a little about the kid and put a face to the name. With the Monday regulars they're used to my style, and I know what to expect in terms of skill and how they're going to deal losing and my instruction.

With the newer kids I have the delicate job of trying to show the kid what he or she did wrong, help make sure he or she knows what to do next time, but at the same time not make him feel bad for missing a good opportunity to take advantage of the opponent's oversights. It's taken me the first two rounds to kind of gauge reactions to my instruction. After I went over one kid's second round loss I realized I got a little over zealous in explaining how to take advantage of a player who has traded off his fianchettoed bishop on g7 for something besides the other dark squared bishop. It appeared that he had the opportunity to stick his bishop on h6, driving the rook of f8, and then sticking the queen on h8 diagonal and forcing mate on g7. He felt so bad about missing this that he burst in tears. I can deal with the kids coming in crying, but I don't like it if I cause the child to burst into tears. I assured the kid that he should not feel bad for missing it. I wanted him to learn how to take advantage the holes in the king side. Perhaps it was a bit over the head of a 3rd grader with a 300 rating.

Then I had the little girl who fell into her first four move checkmate. She was so embarrassed to lose so quickly. She came into the room in tears. She had even beaten me back to the team room. One of the parents was trying to work with her, on figuring out how to stop. He didn't really know. I quickly gave her my anti-four move checkmate lesson. By the end of our session she had it covered. As long as she remembers it I won't see that happen again.

Then I had the kid who on his first move grabbed the queen pawn and had to move it. Being very inexperienced and doing things on automatic pilot caused his game to go up flames almost immediately. The teacher at school has taught all the kids how to play the Giacco Piano. They're pretty proficient with it, but some of the kids learn the opening but don't understand what they're really trying to do. This particular kid played 1. d4 d5. 2. e4 (trying to get back to his familiar e4 opening 2...dxe. 3. Nf3 (again thinking about trying to get back on track, but overlooking 3...exf3). He simply panicked and tried to make it into some familiar, but became oblivious to the fact that the opponent's pieces were not in the same spots they'd be in if the game had started 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5. So in 3 moves he managed to give up a pawn and a knight.

It's been a tough day for the group. Half the kids are 0-2. 5 kids are 1-1, and 1 kid is .5-1.5. The kid with the draw had one of the most amazing games for a kid with 500 rating. He kept coming up with good moves and find the correct responses to various threats. His missed mating with a pawn, and at the end he moved the wrong piece to cut of the king and it lead to stalemate. I hope to get it into Chessbase and share it. It was very interesting.

Internet access has been a major pain the butt. The free wireless at the Hilton has been impossible. I finally was able to borrow an Ethernet cable from someone and get access back in my room. If I'm not totally trashed after 3 rounds of trying decipher scores I will post an update. There will be no Parents & Friends tournament for me at this event. Coaching 14 kids by myself is quite enough. Though for round one "King Kong" had a quick game and came into the team room afterwards. He asked me if he could go over some of the kids games. I think the kids enjoyed getting pointers from one of their peers. They asked me if Kevin had ever beaten me. His mom and I got a chuckle out of that question as we'd answer it, "Yep a few times."

Wacky Wednesday! Who Wants to Lose??

Last night I played in the New York Experts at the Marshall and got crushed in the first round by an old nemesis who is making his chess comeback. This is the second time he's totally trashed me with black in less then a week. Before last week we had not played each other since 2005. Last night's game got me thinking about our various encounters from 2002 to 2005. Our 9th game is worthy of the Wacky Wednesday designation.

The first time we played he was going into third grade and was coming down to the Marshall every Thursday. His rating was moving up rapidly from 1100 at the start of 2002 to 1600 by the 2002 Annual list. Over the course of a year we played each other 8 times. He won the first 4 in a row, and then I won the next 4 in a row. Our 9th encounter was a comedy of errors. What can one say about a game where both players keeping hanging pieces? Remember the old maxim "Who ever makes the next to last mistake wins." This clearly applied here. If one did not know the players or ratings involved, he might think it was some game between a couple of 800 players. No notes or deep analysis included.




My last move was one of those time pressure implosions done when I had 21 seconds versus his 8 minutes and 21 seconds.

Learning To Learn

This is not a chess piece, but it ties into what I'm trying sort out in my mind regarding making forward progress in chess. It's my story of a journey through a whole new thing for me. How I'm learning I believe can carry over to my chess study. I share my story, and in another post I will try to link this to chess. Feel free to make any observations in my methods as a student.

I wanted to name this the "Art of Learning" but that title has already been taken. Besides I'm not sure what I've been doing for the last six months could be considered art. Back in November I wrote about taking a trial Tae Kwon Do class, and then signing up for a year's program. I'm into my sixth month, and it's been an interesting journey. I have not only learned something about an entirely new sport, I've also learned something about learning, and more specifically, how I learn. At times it's been overwhelming and frustrating, but when it clicks it's been exciting. Soon I hope I can take all of these experiences and transfer them to the process of regaining much of what I feel I've lost from chess.

This foray into Tae Kwon Do is the first time in over 25 years that I have attempted to learn something that is totally new, and totally unrelated to anything else I already have experience in. All my years as an athlete did not prepare me for this because the sports I already do have no movements or components that transfer over to the martial arts. Probably the closest thing would be my experiences doing modern dance in high school. The forms we learn in class remind me of a choreographed piece of dance. Though I think all those years of turning my toes outward in dance had a bad influence on me in Tae Kwon Do.

I don't remember what it was like when I first learned how to play chess. That was 40 years ago. I don't remember if I had difficulty learning the names and movements of the different pieces. I do remember that I lost many games before I won my first game. Perhaps being a teenager I picked up the movements quickly even if I had no clue what to do with the pieces. Though if learning how the pieces move was anything like my first night in Tae Kwon Do class I may never had taken to chess like I did.

At the Tae Kwon Do school (do jang) I attend, a newbie starts as a no belt. One has to earn the right to even wear a white belt with their uniform. Newbies stick out like a sore thumb. Their uniforms are crisp and clean, and have no patches on them. As soon as the warm up and stretching part is over the class goes into a routine called Kam Sa Hyung (Appreciation Form). It's a 10 step form which includes the most basic stances and punches in it. So if it's your first day of class you get pulled to the side to learn the 10 steps to it. Most people learn the 10 steps in their first class. In my first class I barely got past number one.

Number one involves simply moving your left foot to the left so your feet are shoulder width apart. At the same time your hands go from being flat and straight at your side to fists resting above your hips. For what ever reason I could not get the hang of that movement. I'd move the wrong foot and my toes would being pointing out instead of my feet being perfectly parallel. My stance would be too wide and my hands would be in the wrong spot and not in a proper fist. I couldn't understand a word the master was saying to me because his English was so heavily accented. While I'm in the back of the room trying to do this one motion there are people moving about the room. Depending on what color belt they are they're all doing something different. Many of the things they're doing are accompanied by loud yells of kihop! For someone like me who is easily distracted all of this motion and noise was difficult to contend with.

When I'm trying to process something I try to visualize it my mind. That first class I spent a lot of time staring at myself in the mirror and trying to get my feet and hands to move in a coordinated manner. The master kept prodding me to keep practicing, but I was trying to picture it first and then do it. I kind of got the hang of it so he added step number two which simply involved moving the fists from my hips to pointing downward with a slight bend in the arms. I would figure out later that number two is simply the ready stance. (joombi)

Every time he fussed about how I was making a fist or where my left foot was I'd get flustered and pace around and shake my head. It's similar to what I've done sitting at the chess board after making some horrible move that my opponent has exploited. There were a few times that first night as I practiced those two steps by myself I was on the verge of tears. I was frustrated and and embarrassed as people walking past the do jang would be looking in the window at the class. The do jang is in a small shopping mall and the main classroom has large windows facing towards the other stores. Being closest to the window I felt like the runt of the litter in the pet shop window. "Mommy how come that little puppy isn't playing with the other puppies?"

It took me around 4 classes to learn those 10 steps and do it well enough to earn my first uniform patch. One thing that helped was a handout with pictures of Grandmaster Kim in each of the stances. I needed the cheat sheet to assist me when practicing at home. At the same I was getting the hang of that they started teaching me 4 basic blocks. These were confusing to me because I never could remember which arm should up or down, and which way my hands should be facing. There was no "cheat sheet" for that sequence and it was frustrating for me to try to practice that at home. Often the moment I walked out of class I didn't remember what I had learned. Hell there were days as soon as the master told me to practice on my own while he worked with somebody else, I'd totally forget what he had told me. On the one hand they want you to practice, but if you don't remember what they taught you it's hard to practice.

It usually takes a few classes before I'd know enough to have something I could practice at home. It took me more then the 7 to 15 repetitions that Tempo refers to in his excellent series of articles. Perhaps for me with my non-dominant hand form of dyslexia, steps that involve precise placement and movement of the left and right legs and arms go beyond the simple things that most people can learn by repeating it 7 to 15 times. The Korean masters work hard to make sure the student's form is correct, but often I don't understand what else they're telling me about what it is I'm actually doing. Sometimes in a large class they will have one of the black belts work with the newbies or junior belts. The four basic blocks began to make more sense when somebody could explain to me in simple English what part of the body I was trying to protect from what type of punch. I have to remind myself this is a form of self defense. Doing the four basic blocks without understanding defensive principles of them is kind of like learning an opening without understanding what you're trying to achieve in that particular opening.

I went through the same sort of process learning 10 elbow strikes. Once again until I learned what part of the body I was aiming for with each strike it didn't make much sense to me. Grandmaster Kim has a DVD with the Poomse (forms) that have to be learned at each level. The first chapter is an introduction and there's a brief clip where he is performing the 10 elbow strikes. I spent a lot of time just looking at that brief clip, stopping and starting it and running it in slow motion. At first my movements in class were big and exaggerated. I remember one evening in class this older woman watching and laughing as I was over exaggerating the movements to the point that I kept pulling a muscle in my back. She wasn't laughing at me. It was more about how the masters were trying to get me to aim to the right spot. It just looked pretty ridiculous at the time. Now as I do this particular exercise I can understand what Josh Waitzkin in his book "The Art of Learning" means by making smaller circles. It's a matter of fine tuning the movements and getting more out of each strike. I think it's similar to what the Knights Errant are doing as they get to later circles.

It took me two months to finally test to receive my white belt. The journey to yellow belt took even longer. I finally attained yellow after three months. A number of the students that started around the same as me are already at orange or green. My learning style is different and it's taken me longer to master the skills to move on.

That took longer because I missed three weeks of classes due to my Spain trip and then being sick. Coming back after a three week absence was hard. I had retained what I had learned for my white belt test, but I had lost much of what I had just started learning in late January and early February.

Each of those colored tapes on my belt represent a required component for promotion. The yellow is for 10 basic motions. The green is for the poomse which at this level is comprised of 20 movements. The blue is for Il Su Shik (one-step sparring). The red is for board breaking and the black is given to you when your ready to test.

The 10 basic motions are almost identical to the 4 basic blocks. The arm movements are similar but the stance and hand positions are different. It was only when I could make the connection to the similarities and differences that I could put them all together. Small things matter in terms of whether your arm is up or down, and whether your hand on the up arm is facing up or down. That drove me nuts trying to figure that out. It took someone explaining that the fist is rotating upward so it starts facing down. I don't process it correctly without understanding what is happening. For me it's not a matter of doing a movement I need to understand the the mechanics so that I'm getting the most from it.

The poomse for yellow is a 20 step form called Tiger 1. It's a combination of blocks, punches and stances that has one moving in 4 different directions. The challenge is remembering which direction one is going, what is being executed and which arm or leg is leading. Depending on the student they break it down into little chunks. I think I may have started with one and two. Then 1-4. Then 5-8 followed by 1-8. Gradually the remaining 12 steps were added in. Most of my progress on this form was made by staying for a second class on Friday evening that would be three teenage boys who were also white belts and me. With just the four of us working on the same thing I was able to concentrate getting the movements down without being distracted by other students working on different things.

Here I am performing Tiger 1 in my test. I still need work on my form. Shoulders should be straight forward.

I think the Il Su Shik (one-step sparring) was most difficult for me. I think that was because I'm doing it with a partner and I had to learn to respond to what the partner is doing. One partner is the attacker, and the other defends. Then the roles reverse. You do this a total of 6 times. 3 times as defender and 3 as attacker. (High, middle and low punches and blocks.) It was easy for me to get flustered working with a partner who could be my teen aged son if I had kids. I hate messing up as it is. It's worse when I'm messing up and making it hard for my partner to execute his moves correctly. The kids were patient with this lady older then their mother. None of the kids give me the infamous adolescent eye roll of "OMG I can't believe I'm doing this with somebody my parents' age."

I was happy that during the test there was an odd number and I got to have one of the black belt instructors as my partner. He had been in big help as I was trying to master this stuff.

The test ends with board breaking. Before we break the board we declare what bad habit we want to break. Breaking the board represents breaking that habit. I want to break the habit of beating up on myself so much. That will take time. The test was on a Thursday, and I got down on myself for pissing away another win into a draw to King Kong Sr, causing me to have my usual last round match up with "Please Wait".

Mission accomplished! Yellow belt in hand. Now it's time to go for orange. I'm hoping that my journey to orange will not take another three months. It shouldn't since I'm gaining more understanding of what I'm actually doing. The big overly optimistic goal is to do it in month, but the more doable goal is making it before I leave for Korea of June 30th. Stay tuned.

9th Bruce Bowyer Memorial Tournament.

This weekend I played in the Bruce Bowyer Memorial Tournament. It's the first time I've actually played in the event. I've heard so many good things about the event. It seems I've either been away in working on the days they have it. The last few years it's been on the weekend that I'd be in Florida competing in the Saint Anthony's triathlon. This year I bagged the race. It's a long story which I briefly touched on in my other blog.


Bruce Bowyer was a long time member of the Manhattan Chess Club. His family and friends started this tournament in 2000 in his memory. This years Grand Prix event on Saturday drew over 50 players. I'm not sure how many showed up for Sunday's scholastic. Here is a quote about the tournament from their website. It sums it quite nicely. The adults enjoy coffee, the low $ fee and the strong competition, but the consensus overall is that a hug from Sunny makes this truly the friendliest chess event of the year. Young gunslingers everywhere were thrilled to see our ‘resident’ GM, the great Joel Benjamin playing as he has done every year – we love you , Joel!

International Master Jay Bonin is a recipient of one of Sunny's hugs. Sunny is Bruce's niece. She makes everyone feel welcome.

Nick Conticello handled the pairing duties while Ed Frumkin handled the floor. Ed didn't seem to have to work too hard. There didn't seem to be any major issues, except perhaps the last round discussion on board 1 regarding the DGT "Bronstein Mode" versus the Chronos "Time Delay Mode". Bronstein puts the time back after the move whereas delay counts down before the clock runs. Even though they are different, according to USCF rules they are treated equally in terms of clock preference. Delay is the normal choice in the US whereas Bronstein or increments are more typical in Europe. After everything was said and done the players decided to use GM Benjamin's Chronos with delay.

The other small glitch was they didn't seem to have my entry so I didn't get paired in the first round. The funny thing was if I had been paired normally I would have played one of my Thursday night first round usual suspects Polyakin or Margulis. I wasn't thrilled by the prospect of getting paired against the 1300 getting the 'please wait". My luck would be that he's an under rated ringer, and I lose and get crappy pairings the rest of the tournament. If I was due to lose in round one, I wanted to play a higher rated player.

Anatoliy Ostrovskiy was originally going to to take a 1/2 point bye in round one, but he offered to play me instead. Yes the same Anatoliy Ostrovskiy who I so grossly blundered away a totally won ending against in November. Maybe this game was dedemption for that horrible game in November or pay back for his son crushing me this past Thursday. I'm 0-6 against his son, but now at least I have more then a draw against the family Ostrovskiy.



He actually read my account of our November encounter, so he couldn't help but to kid me about picking up my captured queen before making the promotion. I had kind of forgotten about it when I reached over to get the queen though this time I was sure the promotion was coming.

In the next round I got paired up against Kassa Korley, rated 2115. Like my other encounters with him, I got crunched. For his efforts he was rewarded with a third round trip to board one against GM Benjamin.

Here are the top board match ups in round three. It's the young guns of NYC against the titled players. GM Joel Benjamin was matched up against 8th grader Kassa Korley, and IM Alex Lenderman was playing 9th grader Raven Sturt. IM Jay Bonin is in the foreground, but I can't remember who he played. Joel and Alex beat their young opponents, and Jay drew with his. My combined record against all those people seated there is 0-27. Ouch! I've never played Joel Benjamin.

There ended out being a 5 way tie for first place at 3 1/3 points. Joel and Alex drew each other. Jay Bonin beat Yevgeni Margulis the remaining 3 pointer. Zachary Weiner and Oliver Chernin won their 4th round games to join the titled players at the top.

Anatoliy Ostrovskiy came up with a new variation of the Swiss Gambit. After giving up his first round 1/2 point bye to play and lose to me, he went on to win his remaining 3 games and won the Under 2000 prize. Myself, I did the Swiss Gambit in reverse. I won my first round game and then lost my last 3 games. I got the tough competition I wanted, but would have been happier if I had not had a time pressure induced implosion in round 4 against one of those 1300 rated high school kids.

It's a very nice event. The Bowyer family and friends do a wonderful job taking care of the players. In the morning there was coffee, tea and pastries. Later on there were Chessman cookies and fruit. For the last round there were donuts. What more can the hungry chess player ask for? It's a very friendly atmosphere and is kind of like a little chess family reunion. That's definitely a tournament that I will want to play in again.