World Youth Chess Championships 2009: Day 0

We finally arrived Antalya, Turkey after 3 flights of 9000 miles, half way around the world for the World Youth Chess Championships 2009.

In this tournament, national youth champions of many countries come to fight for the 3 medals to show who is really the best. I have been to this tournament twice before, once in Vietnam and the other time in ... Antalya, Turkey, the same place, even the same hotel! (Readers of my blog can check out my experience from my prior posts).

Outside my dorm

The hotel seems to be pretty much the same as I went last time, a beautiful place with lots of stray cats. I stayed in a room very close to the one I did last time. It was raining when I arrived so we had to be careful not to step into puddles of water when we walked upstairs with our luggages which was fortunately lighter than last time because my dad insisted.

Limra Hotel

I took a short walk around the place after I showered. I recognized the smae items around the pool including the water slides, the dolphin statue, and the bridges with ropes. I also saw the chilren's play ground and the same gift shop.

As dinner, I saw more of my teammates. We sat with Sarah and Jonathan.

World Youth Chess Championships 2009: Day 1

Today I woke up at 3:30 AM, clearly jetlagged. I tossed and turned for a coupon hours. When I finally slept, I slept through the breakfast and the technical meeting. The pairings was not up and the internet was down. My dad tried to find my first round opponent but it was hard because we did not have the final list of players. Finally 40 minutes before the round started, we got mthe tournament information, which showed that I was to play a girl from UAE.

When I got in the tournament hall there was a massive crowd and we were sufficating in it. When I sat down, I found my opponent, a short girl who looked like some girl from South America.



In the game, we did our openings fairly quickly. My opponent blundered 2 king-side pawns. I was soon in an advantage position. Then my opponent made a scholastic level mistake - missing a mate-in-one and was defeated.

I won my first game in 20 minutes and was out of the hall before my dad had a chance to get out of the restricted area.

The lesson I learned is to be more careful and more accurate.

Later on I learned that almost everyone on the US team have won their games in this round.

World Youth Chess Championships 2009: Day -1

My dad woke me up at 4 am. I muttered some gibberish and then suddenly realized that I today I was going to start my grueling 24 hours' of trip to Turkey for the 2009 World Youth Chess Championships.

Ready to start my 24-hour road trip

When I arrived at the Los Angeles Airport, I saw my teammate Annie Wang. I found that we had the same flight schedule, which was LA to New York to Istanbul to Antalya, a painful long journey.

Met with prodigy Annie

After our first flight, we arrived at the JFK airport, I met more teammates including Abby Marshall who recently went to the 2009 national high school invitational - Denker tournament as the only girl and actually won it!!

Together with 2009 Denker Winner Abby

Letter from GM Alexandra Kosteniuk

Earlier this evening, when I was finishing my dinner, my dad handed me a sealed plastic envelope with my name in the middle. When I looked more carefully, I found at top left corner there was a small sticker with a familiar name Alexandra Kosteniuk, the 12th Women's World Chess Champion. I was excited to find out that GM Kosteniuk sent me a note and a nice gift. I am glad that there is some recognition of my work in chess. Thank you very much Alexandra!

Pan American Youth Chess Championships 2009: Medal Award Ceremony

Pan American Youth Chess Championships 2009: Medal Award Ceremony

Pan American Youth Chess Championships 2009: Returning Home

The day after the closing ceremony and last round, I was on my way home. I woke up early enough to eat breakfast.

The flight from Mar Del Plata to Buenos Aires took off at 2 pm. so we had the morning to ourselves. I did not have to pack because my dad had woken up extra-early to do that.

Simone, Vincent and Stan at Mar Del Plata plaza

We spent the morning with Vincent Huang, my 15-year-old teammate that earned a silver medal in Pan American Youth 2008. Vincent, like me, is from Southern California. He came alone to the tournament and was busy prepareing and playing the rounds in the previous days. We went to the plaz, a bunch of street of highrise buildings with shops on the first floor. Soon I learned that most of the shop in the plaza are clothing shops. There were also banks but only a few souvenir shops.

After a while of walking, we came to the end of the street, which is actually the Atlantic Ocean. We saw some more souvenir shops in which I bought some cute stuff. We walked back to the hotel along the ocean.

With the Argentina Heart At Buesnos Aires Airport

With Stan before getting into the gate

Pan American Youth Chess Championships 2009: Closing

Team USA - The Medalists
Victor, Andrew, Daniel, Arthur
Tommy, Simone, Tanuj, Annie


Team USA - The coaches and the 3rd place team trophy
Aviv, Armen, Beatriz, Michael

Here are some of the younger medalists in the US Team:


Annie W. - Gold Medalist


Tanuj V. - Gold Medalist


Arthur S. - Silver Medalist


Tommy H. - Bronze Medalist


Me - the blog writer