World Champion!!!

Hey everybody! It has been a long time since I have last blogged, but it has been pretty crazy with the Holidays! And chess is always pretty busy for me! But with all the craziness I still figured I need to blog about the World Youth Chess Championships 2012 in Slovenia. If you read my last blog than you probably know how I did in the end! But in this blog I really want to focus on my highlights and key games to becoming the U14 World Chess Champion!

One of the hardest parts about playing in a tournament far away is the time difference. Because of the time difference when you are playing it might be like the middle of the night for you and I don't know about everyone else, but my brain just really doesn't like to think at that point! A bed sounds much better! So to kind of help with that we (my mom and I) flew in a week earlier to Austria and it was a dual opportunity to get adjusted to the time zone and also to work and get my brain warmed up with my coach before the tournament. Working with my coach was great! But one of the things you always notice when you go out of the country is the different culture. We were in Burgau, Austria which is a small village with a relatively small population (at least compared to where I live) of about 1000 people. You could just tell the difference in culture as it was obvious in the building styles and even in the air as we walked around it just really had a different feel for me. It was very enjoyable to see, but one of the biggest difference was how long the meals were! At our hotel we were served some very nice lunches and dinners, but every meal took about one hour which (especially for lunch) is not usual for me. I mean hurrying and putting something frozen in the microwave and eating it doesn't take that long! But the food was fabulous! And then the last night we had a special dinner which was seven different courses in which they serve a small amount of some of their best meals. It was very good without a doubt, but it took 4-hours! To some of you that are reading this maybe that is regular, but not for me. I mean I thought chess games took a while, but just do a meal like this every game and hey it would take about the same amount of time. It was a fun experience and after the week it was about a three and a half hour trip to get to our hotel in Maribor, Slovenia.

Our hotel in Maribor was nice, most of the US team stayed in the hotel where the U10 Girls and U8 Open and Girls sections were played, the hotel Habakuk, but we (and a few other US Players) were in a hotel on top of the mountain (quite literally)! We were in hotel Bellevue which was about a 10 minute cable car ride down the mountain to where the tournament was (which was a lot better than by car which was an hour). The hotel was nice, but unfortunately the food wasn't that good and actually made several people (including myself) sick throughout the tournament. Luckily for me, I got the most sick on the rest day which didn't make for a fun touring day, but at least I wasn't playing. It was a big difference from the great food in Austria! We eventually found an Italian restaurant (I have a new love and appreciation for Italian food now) and ate there everyday for lunch. Other than that there were tons of hotels hosting other countries.

The other sections (U18, U16, U14, U12 Open and Girls and the U10 Open) were by the hotel Habakuk at a Sports Center (the Dras Center). Overall from our hotel room down to the playing hall was about 15 minutes which is not bad at all.

This was my third time playing in a tournament out of the country and second time playing in a World Youth tournament (the other time was in Greece). The biggest difference from the tournaments in the US and the WYCC is the round times. Now I don't mean one is at 1:00 and one is at 7:00, but in the US most tournaments are two games a day and at WYCC they are one game a day except one day with two games. This is a HUGE difference! With games going about 4 hours, with only one game a day that means a whole lot more time. Now most of this time I used for preparation for my game. The previous two months before the tournament I had done a lot of opening work. New openings can be hard to remember sometimes, but with a lot of time before each game it made it easier to be able to study my openings before the game. Some of this time preparing was on my own, but then I would go and work with GM Alejandro Ramirez (who was a US Team provided coach). I enjoyed working with Alejandro and he is a good friend of mine! So all the work before the tournament and all the work during the tournament definitely helped, but now I want to point out my games that were key for winning in the end.

My first round game:

This game in every tournament is always important for me because it is the first round. Like a first impression, this game can really get me heading strong into the rest of the tournament. It also is the "warm up" game. After not playing in a tournament in a while this is the game that I try to really get into the tournament mind set.