The Bashkansky family Chess Travel blog


Bashkansky family's Chess Travel blog - parents Guy and Ludmila with children:
NM Ethan and WIM Naomi - World School Chess Champion (Girls Under 13)

Sunday, April 28, 2013

All-Girls in Chicago: Naomi Becomes USA National Champion!

All-Girls in Chicago: Naomi Becomes USA National Champion!

2013 All-Girls USA National Champion


On April 26-28, 2013 Naomi Bashkansky and her mom Luda traveled to Chicago, where the All-Girls National Chess Championship is held every year around this time, in Swissotel Chicago Downtown.

This year Naomi won first place at the All Girls Championship, in the Under 10 category!  She has become the reigning chess champion among girls her age in the USA!  And just one week before this, Naomi became Washington State Grade 4 ChampionAtta girl!  

And yes, that's Kasparov at the picture, personally giving Naomi her hard won trophy:




WA Girls Success in All-Girls National Championships


This year in Chicago, Garry Kasparov gave trophies to quite a few WA girls:

Under 10:
Naomi Bashkansky - first place.

Under 12:
Sujatha Chalasani - sixth place.

Under 14:
Sangeeta Dhingra - ninth place,
Olga Cherepakhin - twelfth place.
Both Sangeeta and Olga also got second place in bughouse.

Under 20:
Sarah May - third place.





Chicago!


Downtown Chicago is an amazing masterpiece of modern architecture.  Its Arts Institute houses some of the best art pieces and exhibits in the whole world.  Here are links to Luda’s daily photo albums:











2012 Flashback

2012 All-Girls USA Vice-Champion


Last year we also traveled to the All-Girls National Chess Championship in Swissotel Chicago Downtown, on April 20-23, 2012.

Back then Naomi took second place in the USA among girls 8 years old and under.





Amazing Chicago!

Downtown Chicago is an amazing masterpiece of modern architecture.  Its Arts Institute houses some of the best art pieces and exhibits in the whole world.  Here are links to my daily photo albums:














If you haven’t clicked on the links above to see the photo albums, it’s like you won a lottery prize but lost the winning ticket.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Double Triumph at the Washington State Elementary Chess Championship

Double Triumph at the Washington State Elementary Chess Championship

Naomi wins 1st place!  And so does her school!


It was a double triumph for Naomi and her school!

Naomi won 1st place in her grade 4 category, winning all 5 games out of 5. She played stronger opponents due to her high rating and thus got better tie-break count than 3 other players with the same score. Good job! 


Her Spiritridge Elementary School won 1st team place in the 4-6 section, taking 23.5 points out of 25 possible (5 games x 5 top players).  First they took Nashville (SuperNationals 2nd place), then they take Washington (State Elementary 1st place)!




These great victories are our sweet reward for waking up at 4:30 AM in the morning to drive almost 3 hours to the championship venue, enduring the nerve-wracking wait for each game results and then the harrowing drive back late at night, while being a barely conscious half-sleeping zombie behind the wheel.  

Partial fainting in the parked car during the first and second rounds passed for the lacking sleep.  The greatest entertainment of the day was provided by the poultry show in a nearby pavillion.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Scholastic Chess Nationals in Nashville

Scholastic Chess Nationals in Nashville

The Whole Country Comes to the Land of Country

Тhe luxurious and humongous Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, TN frequently holds USCF scholastic chess national championships.

Every four years, all school ages come here to compete, from kindergarten to high school.  This event is known as SuperNationals.  For a few days around spring break time, the place becomes the massive focus of US scholastic chess pilgrimage. This is the most important children's chess tournament in the US.

This post compresses time but not space.  It describes all 3 of our trips to chess nationals in Nashville, TN.  They occurred in April 2009 (SuperNationals IV), 2012 (Elementary Nationals) and April 2013 (Supernationals V).

2009 SuperNationals IV (K-12)


That was our first trip to any Nashville chess championship, still vividly in memory.  Both Naomi (grade K) and Ethan (grade 5) played, and all four of us traveled.  First time we experienced an event of such grand scale (see http://www.chess.com/event/view/supernationals-iv).

Hotel


After a long and tiresome 2-leg flight we waited a long time in the airport for the pre-ordered transfer bus (a taxi would be faster and cheaper) and got to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Resort lobby pretty tired.  However, once we got the keys and went on to find our room, the amazement set in.  It’s five stadium-size areas, each a garden city under a glass roof:



Here’s a view of just one tenth of the Delta area (the upper-right corner of the red part above):



Kasparov, Shamitov, Kosteniuk, Polgar


There is a story behind the photo below of Ethan and Naomi with the best chess player in world history, Garry Kasparov.  In the morning of April 3, 2009, Garry Kasparov and the chess playing astronaut Greg Chamitoff were the keynote speakers at the opening ceremony at the Grand Ole Opry House.  Kasparov proclaimed, ironically: “As a young kid, I just hated these opening ceremonies.  The chess functioners just kept talking and talking, and all I wanted was to play chess!”.  This got him an enthusiastic round of applause from the kids audience.


Later that day, back in the hotel, hundreds of people stood in line to get Kasparov’s autograph.  He was signing his own books which people bought specially for this occasion.  We also bought his book in advance, to get an autograph: “How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom”.  He made periodic breaks from signing, every 15 minutes.  As our turn in line approached, both our kids became quietly excited.  They gave Kasparov his book for signing.

“How old are you?” - he asked Naomi.  Shy silence was the obvious answer.  No self-respecting girl or woman will tell her age just like that.  Garry understood.  He said: “Is it a secret?”  Her eyes were burning with both adoration and indignation.  Ethan laughed and provided the age information (she’s 5, he’s barely 11).  This is when I pressed my camera button, and took the photo below.


Just before going to Kasparov, Naomi posed for a photo with Alexandra Kosteniuk, who was the Women's World Chess Champion at that time.  We simply kept running into chess celebrities ;-)

A couple of days later, we also met Susan Polgar (the oldest Polgár sister).  Susan has won many Women World Championships and Chess Olympiads.  She does a lot for kids chess development in the US.  She is certainly one of the most famous and important chess celebrities.  Naomi posed for a photo with Susan, and soon after that became her online chess school student.

Photos


2009_04_06 Nashville Downtown  -- with a full-size 100 year old copy of the Parthenon, which is quite handy, because the original is in ruins again, in the course of its endless reconstruction.


Nashville’s showily seedy old town oozes country music:

Results


Naomi (rating 786) got 5 points out of 7 and a shared 25th place trophy in the K section.

Ethan (rating 1410) got 4.5 points out of 7.  He played well, but grade 5 competition was strong.

2012 Elementary Nationals 


Only Naomi played in the 2012 Elementary Nationals, because Ethan was in grade 8 already.

Naomi traveled to Nashville with her mom and took 10th place in her K-3 category!  This is her best personal placement result in all 3 trips to Nashville.

Photos





2013 SuperNationals V


2013 is the year of the SuperNationals’ (K-12) fifth edition.  This year, 5335 schoolchildren traveled to Nashville to play in SuperNationals V, making it the largest rated chess tournament in history - see http://uschess.org/tournaments/2013/snv/

Both Ethan and Naomi traveled to Nashville, accompanied by their mom.  During the tournament they spent great time in that amazing hotel with fellow chess parents and their kids.  It’s a small world, where friends from Pennsylvania and Arizona are closer than next door neighbors.

Photos


2013_04_07 Nashville SuperNationals V (thanks to fellow chess parents for award ceremony photos!)

Results

Naomi got 5 points out of 7.  She lost only to 2 players with much higher ratings.  Good job!

Overall there were 1565 teams from all 50 states.  Naomi’s Spiritridge Elementary team won the 2nd place team trophy in the K-5 Open championship.  They missed 1st place by only a half point.  Spiritridge also won the 2nd place team trophy in the K-6 Blitz Championship.



All of Ethan’s opponents (except one) had ratings significantly higher than his own rating.  Despite these overwhelming odds, Ethan managed to wrestle 4.5 points out of 7 and placed 25th in the K-9 Championship.  Very good job!