Too soon after the conclusion of the British, Tara and I jumped on a plane to LA. Ankit Gupta, the organiser, had persuaded me, rather against my better judgement to act as instructor at a 4-day Chess camp. As I had never done anything remotely similar before, this was to say the least somewhat a daunting prospect not aided by a severe lack of preparation time. It was an interesting and highly educational experience (at least for me – not sure about the students) but in general didn’t go too badly apart from a sticky period towards the end of day 3 when I was running a bit low on material.
After a tough simul the following day and some whirlwind sightseeing it was time for the tournament with the common US timetable of 9 games in 5 days. I wasn’t too optimistic about surviving the demanding schedule as I was still having problems with jet lag and was a little fatigued.
A couple of lucky breaks early on changed the dynamic of the event. My first game began (I was Black) 1.d2-d4 Ng8-f6 2.c2-c4 e7-e6 3.g2-g3 d7-d5 4.Ng1-f3 d5xc4 5.Bf1-g2 a7-a6 6.0-0 Nb8-c6 7.Nb1-c3 Bf8-e7 (7..Ra8-b8 is the main theoretical move). Now 8.Qd1-a4 would have been errr.. a bit awkward but my adversary was hypnotized by my incompetence and passed up the opportunity. I wasn’t even aware of what had happened until someone mentioned it to me the following day.
I also had a bit of luck in the 3rd round. I actually got a good opening in this game but after slowly but surely dissipating my advantage I got away with a bad oversight around the time control:
After this things continued to go my way and I finished with a hefty 7.5/9 and took home a dazzling trophy.
Many thanks to Ankit for all his efforts in putting together this excellent event and I wish him the best of luck with his plans for the future.
Photo Credits:
I think you just need for experience in coaching chess. Great players like you should have no problems teaching the basics of chess to younger players. How they develop further would depend on their own talent and passion for the game.
after 8.Qa4 can’t black just castle and if 9.Qc4 then Rb8 seems playable.
It was a pleasure having you attend the Metropolitan International tournament and lead a section of our camp — we hope to have you back at a future edition sometime. Best of luck to you as well in the future, and thank you again for being so easy and pleasant to work with.