Chess Diva 5

Barbara and I are getting ready for the fifth episode, which will be recorded next Tuesday! We are so excited!
Today I'm editing the People's Replacement tournament footage for our fifth episode. It is fun to edit video footage, but it takes a long time.
I edit on mostly on Final Cut Express. Note to other video editors: (Final Cut Express is practically the same program as Final Cut Pro)

Hope everybody had a nice Easter!

Daniel Naroditsky wins another award

Lauren here!
First of all, happy St. Patrick's day! Be sure to wear green so you don't get pinched!

We interviewed Daniel Naroditsky in our second episode. He won the Schein Friedman award, which goes out
to the top nation's chess players.
Congratulations to Daniel!
To read more about this, please go to HERE

HERE

Want to get better by a chess coach?

Getting a chess coach is a great way to get better. Often times, she or he will give you homework to
complete. When I taught chess, I also went over my students' games. You need to be serious about getting better
or it won't work. Listen to your coach.

If you don't do your homework that the coach gave you, you are wasting the coach's and your time!
This applies to other things in life too.

over the board or computer chess?

Lauren is writing this.
Do you like to play over the board chess better than internet chess?
There's no wrong or right answer here.

I like to play both. If I feel very outgoing, I like to play over the board chess since I can see my oppenent.
Playing on the internet is cool too, but most of the time, I don't know who the person controlling the enemy pieces.

Youngest master in the USA

Meet USA's newest master, Nicholas Nip. He's just nine years old!!
I'd like to congratulate him for breaking the record of being the youngest master in the USA!!
Since he is from the San Francisco bay area, I have some good stories about him.
Last year, he won the the California chess championships in San Mateo, I think for (K-8th ?) grade open section.
I was volunteering at the huge tournament since they needed help. I remembered when he just won the tournament and a tournament director told me, "Boy, he really knows how to play chess!" I though that was a nice compliment towards him.


Either in 2006 or in 2007, Barbara and I played a couple casual blitz games with him at a chess tournament.
He kept beating us! Just by playing him, I knew he was going to go far in chess!
Congratulations Nicholas!!

Chess Diva #5

We will be recording our fifth episode on April 1st, which is April's Fools Day.
We will having a video clip on the Santa Clara tournament which was played last month.
It will feature interesting people and etc.

We are also thinking about talking about Bobby Fischer, who died pretty recently. He was the world champ.

If you have any ideas what to put on our show, please let us know!

Chess differences

I noticed on the top 100 list, there's a lot of strong chess players in New York.

Having a plan is important!

Lauren here!
In chess, it is important to have a plan! What do you want to accomplish in the position?
How do we do that?
You need to identify the strengths and the weaknesses. There are weak and strong squares. There are also
your pieces too.
You can transfer your chess planning skills to other areas in life.

Here's a great example about planning ahead. Yesterday, my friend and her friend and I took a day trip to Seattle and it required planning skills.
But we needed to figure out the specific details. How did we get there? There were two options: a bus and a car. We took a bus.
If you choose to take a bus, you have to figure out what bus routes to take. Plan ahead! We did research on the computer
to figure out the bus route to Seattle.
In chess, you might think, "Oh, I'll launch an attack and deliver checkmate." But you need specific moves to do this, such as
doubling up your rooks on the 'g' file, and moving the 'h' pawn up and etc.

But this leads us to another couple questions: Where did we want to get off in Seattle? What did we want to do once we get in the city? We could take a walk, take a ferry, go to the Space Needle, etc. Once we figured out what we wanted to do, we had to learn what street it was on in Seattle, so we can know what bus stop to get off at. How much does the bus cost? What time would we get to Seattle?
Once we did more research on the computer we had the entire day planned out. In chess, it is very important to be flexible too. It is also important to be prepared. It rains a lot in Seattle, so we came prepared with our raincoats. We had to be flexible in Seattle. For lunch, the cafe ran out of wraps and we really wanted one. We said, "No big deal, just find another place to eat." And that's what we did. In chess, you might find yourself that you need to switch plans. If you wanted to open the 'g' file, but your oppenent locked the pawns on the file, then you need to alter your original plan (maybe try to open another file, etc). See no big deal!

Hope you can learn from this.

Chess in Seattle

Lauren here!
In the city of Seattle, there's a lot of special things about this city.
Starbucks, Microsoft, etc.

Seattle, Washington has hosted the U.S chess championships a couple of times (From
1999 to 2006). In 2007, the US championship was hosted in Oklahoma.
I think it's great that Washington hosted it for a good number of times. That means that Washington
loves chess! Does that mean
a lot of chess players play in Seattle? Maybe on a specific street? Today, I didn't see any chess players in
downtown Seattle. I'm sure they play on a specific street. If you know, please let me know.
Anyway, please click HERE for the Seattle Chess club.
In San Francisco, many chess players play on Market street, but I don't reccommend playing there
because of various reasons.

Fun facts!
One of the most famous landmarks in Seattle is the Space Needle.
It really stands out because it is far away from the main downtown buildings!

Here's my funny joke, I hope you get it:
I went to see Attle, my friend!!! Ha Ha!