Playing The U.S. Junior Girls Championship

This summer, I played in the 2015 U.S. Girls Championship.

The tournament was a 10-player round robin event consisting of the top 10 girls under 20 who accepted. The participants were determined by rating.

The tournament ran June 22 to June 26, with the following players:

Here's a look at the final crosstable from the event:

crosstable via chess-results

Last year, the players weren’t as strong as this year. This year, there are eight girls who have already earned their national master titles, even if their current ratings are below 2200 right now. Half of them have played in the U.S. women's championship. 

They are not just the best among juniors, but the best female players in the country. I think in the next several years, the participants will be all masters. This is the era of girls in chess. We girls are playing chess as well as boys.

Last year, I arrived early on Saturday morning. I met my good friend Jennifer Yu at the airport. She won the world youth championship last year. After we settled at the hotel, we went to lunch together with the organizer, Frank Berry.

The next day I met Maggie Feng, and we went to lunch together.

Tip #1: Enjoy and have fun with your chess friends.

In the free time before the tournament, I practiced some chess puzzles. Here's one of the puzzles I tried. 

Tip #2: Practice tactics.

The idea of practicing calculation is to prepare your brain to work hard. It doesn’t matter that much if you can find the moves or not. After not playing for some time, our lazy brain doesn’t want to work, and so the best way to prepare for a tournament is to do some puzzles.

I will show you the answer to the above puzzle in my next ChessKid video.