World Youth Chess Championships 2010 will start in 3 days. Many of my teammates in U.S. have either arrived or on the road to the tournament site in Greece. I am still at home today. In fact, I will still go to school tomorrow as usual, trying to reduce my days away from school to a minimum. Last Friday, I received my independent study package from all my teachers and found quite some work in it for me to do in the next two weeks. I started with my math and science work this weekend, hoping I can catch up.
Several weeks ago I met a talented chess player from outside of the country and learned that she used to be in the national youth chess program in China, where they were able to study chess full time in the weekdays and do school work on the weekends only. That must be tough, but they became very good in chess with a large amount of training. I guess we, the amatuer players in our country, will have to try really hard and perform well in the World Youth in order to compete with the professionals from the strong chess countries. In any case, I wish the best for the U.S. team.
As for me, I will treat World Youth Chess Championships 2010 as a good learning experience in terms of improving skills, better handling stress (and jet lag) and observing a foreign culture. So far, I have played on the national youth team in tournaments in countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Turkey, and Vietnam. Most of these places are interesting in their own ways, but quite different from what I see in California daily. I got to also see the top players at my age from around the world (and in the US) growing up from little kids into pre-teens just as I have. I am almost certain some of them will become giants in the future chess world.
0 comments:
Post a Comment