World Youth Chess Championships 2010: Day 1

I finally arrived the World Youth Chess Champsionships 2010 tournament site after 24 hours of being on the road and plane. Today I spent most of my time resting or trying to rest so I did not blog earlier.

The weather in this part of Greece is warm even in comparison with the sunny Southern California, but a lot wetter. It was heavily clouded when I came in, rained a little, turn into sunny, and rained a little again, all happened in one day. We stayed in Porto Carras Resort, the main hotel of World Youth tournament. The hotel is a big five story building right next to the Mediterranean Sea, with two big swim pools, and next to them is the beach, much like a smaller version of the Limra Hotel in Turkey which a couple prior World Youth Chess Championships were held. The sea is calm and the waves are a lot smaller than the Pacific Ocean next to California. The water is clean with a tone of deep blue. The facility of the hotel is okay but the internet here is quite impossible for a major event like the World Youth. I just write my blog entries here and let my dad take care of fighting the web connection and posting my writings.

I found that everyone in the US team got here safely and seemed in good spirit. The World Youth tournament is split into 2 locations, with the U8 and U10 groups competing right in a big room next to the hotel lobby and rest of the tournament is in the conference center about 5 minutes walk from the hotel.

Simone on Board 1 before Round 1

One hour before the tournament, I found that I was going to play on board 1 of my section against the top rated girl in my section who is a Woman FIDE Master came from the strongest chess country of Russia. I had long decided that I was going to "enjoy" chess in this tournament anyways so I just continued my resting. I got to the tournament site right at the time of the round start. My opponent is a tall girl who looked quite tense, did not smile or show any other emotion. She moved first with 1.d4. I did not prepare before the round and just played my usual logical chess. We fought for about 3 hours before the game ended abruptly. I went back the hotel room and rested more.

The US team did well on the first day of competition with more wins than losses.