IM Daniel Naroditsky Speaks ......

From USCF Chess Life Online comes a video interview/presentation with/of the youngest participant in the forthcoming 2011 US Chess Championships (Saint Louis, April 14-28), IM Daniel Naroditsky. Daniel has recently achieved his last IM norm. See my previous blog on him here. His website here. But for now enjoy the video:

Meet IM Daniel Naroditsky from Ice Hat Creative on Vimeo.

PS I am looking for anyone who has experience in producing videos and in particular, juniors who has an interest in video production.

AusJCL Application for Selection for 2011 International events

The first deadline of 15th March 2011 has passed. I will collate the information and passed onto the Panel of Selectors. Thanks for your patience.

AusJCL Johns-Putra JETS 2011

My thanks for everyone's patience. I have been waiting for the Panel of Selectors to revert with their selections. Should be able to finalise by early next week.

GM Jan Gustafsson and GM Peter Svidler speaks ......

Chess Base has a new "publication": Ask the experts Vol.1 video talk show with the two grandmasters, GM Jan Gustafsson and GM Peter Svidler, with very good English I must add, first broadcasted on Playchess and now uploaded on YouTube by Chessbase.

This is a sample of the show "Ask the experts" broadcasted on the playchess.com server. Viewer can ask questions directly to our experts, for Vol.1 Gustafsson and Svidler answered a lot of questioned concerning the Mainz tournament, endgame techniques, 1.e4 e5, Sveshnikov and Rossolimo and the Russian Superfinal. The whole show is avalaible on the playchess.com server in the Premium section.

The next show is on march 17th with GM Victor Bologan! Don't miss!

If you cannot view properly then view on YouTube here.

GM Hikaru Nakamura speaks ......

Fresh from his success at Wijk Aan See (the greatest tournament victory achieved by an US chessplayer since Bobby Fisher (maybe? not sure whether GM Gata Kamsky did better or just as well)), GM Hikaru Nakamura visited Washington University Chess Club . The visit was organised in association with Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. Hikaru conducted a 42-board simul as well as bullet chess and also participated in a Q&A session. You can read about the visit here and the Q&A here. Extracts from Q&A:

SL: When did you get into chess?

HN: I started when I was 7 years old. When I first started, I was reasonably decent. I wouldn’t say I was great because I wasn’t. In fact, the first tournament I played in, I lost all of my games….It was after that point [breaking Fischer’s record and becoming a grandmaster] where I realized that I had the potential to become something more than the average grandmaster in chess.

SL: You were homeschooled and lived a very different life than the average child or teenager. How did chess change your childhood experience?

HN: One of the great things about traveling around the world [is that] you meet so many people from so many different backgrounds. In many of these tournaments, I’ve made friends with people from all over the world….Especially now, it’s great to go to one of these countries and look someone up…I think it broadens your view of the way the world is.

The drawback is that at the same time…you don’t have the same life when you’re not traveling and competing. It’s very much a mixed bag. Everyone you know is in different countries. When you’re back at home for long periods of time, you didn’t make the friends that other people normally did.

2011 World Youth Chess Championships

The organisers of the 2011 WYCC has launched their website and published their invitation (and regulations). The website is http://www.wycc2011.com/.

The Brazilian Chess Federation (CBX) , the WYCC 2011 Organising Committee and companies participating, have the honour to invite all the FIDE member Chess Federations around the world to participate in the World Youth Chess Championship 2011 (under 8, under 10, under 12, under 14, under 16 and under 18 years old - open and girls) which will take place in Caldas Novas-Goiás, Brazil, between November the 17th, 2011 (arrival) and November the 27th, 2011 (departure).

Every Federation can register one invited player in each category (under 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 years old, open and girls), that is a maximum total of twelve (12) guest players that will be hosted by the Organizers, plus one trainer for each Federation participating.

The players placed 1-3 in a previous World Youth Championship, and the champions of Continental Open (Girls) Under 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 18 championships, shall have the personal right to participate in the World Youth Championship.

Any Federation can register additional players as well.

In order to provide appropriate tournament conditions, the Federations must complete carefully the official registration form (attached to this file) and send it back to the organizing committee by 25th August 2011. Any other form will not be accepted.

In accordance with the FIDE regulations, an entrance fee of 70 € (Euros) is asked for every guest player (mentioned in 2.2 and 2.3 above) and must be sent directly to FIDE by the national Federation before the event.

In accordance with the FIDE regulations, an entrance fee of 140 € (Euros) is asked for every additional player and must be sent directly to FIDE by the national Federation before the event.

The deadline for registration is 25 August 2011. After this date a penalty of 100 € (Euros) for each late registration will be charged to participants till 1st November 2011 latest. After this date, organisers reserve the right to refuse or decline late registrations or charge higher hotel costs for participants.

All guest players should make their application by the above deadline (25 August 2011). After this date no guest player application will be accepted and their application will be treated as if they were an additional player.

For full details please check out the regulations here. Information about hotels and accomodation costs are available as well on the website (see here).

The Story of Matthew Herman (US)

US Chess Online has published an interview by its Chess Life Online editor, Jennifer Shahade, with US chess player Matthew Herman. I thought Matthew's story was quite inspiring and a bit different from your usual chess prodigy come good/bad stories. I think it also provides a model for Australian juniors who are good at chess, maths and other things and who does not necessarily wish to pursue chess as a career. Also, it is another example of a pathway whereby a junior gives up chess to concentrate on studies but comes back to chess at a later age. Anyway, you should read the full interview here and play through an annotated game by Matthew Herman himself. Matthew's story was also picked up by New York Times chess blogger/writer here. Excerpts (including a comment on the Tiger style of parenting:

JS: Wow, what a great run. When did it all start? Who taught you chess?
MH: I started in 1994 when I was 7 going on 8. My dad taught me to play, he's probably around 1200 strength. I would lose to him every game, and I had the personality for which that was not a satisfactory outcome. I was going to continue to study and play until I could score against him. Then I started going to clubs and playing on the ICC, which was a great lab for developing my game. I probably played thousands of blitz games.

JS: When did you really begin to feel you were getting a lot better?
MH: The summer of 1998 was very successful. I won three class sections in a row, and at the end of the summer my rating was 1950. Although I did lose to you that summer, in the last round of the US Junior Open in Ithaca.

JS: Tell me about how it came to be that you entered college and graduated so early?
MH: A combination of really high SAT scores and a supportive family. My family was living in upstate New York. I think very few parents would be willing to send a kid across the country at 12 years old. If I did well (in college), I'd continue. If not, we'd re-evaluate. I ended up graduating in three years. I went to grad school, and pursued a PHD in math at Brown. I enjoyed it, but it brought to me a similar decision as in chess-where I realized academia was not what I wanted to do. So I started looking for other career opportunities after getting my Masters in Math, and then landed at Goldman as a strategist in January 2005.

JS: How were you able to reach such a high degree of academic success at such a young age?
MH: I had a stay-at-home mom who was very highly educated and loved to teach (she went to Cornell pre-med and later got a master's degree). I started to read at around two years old. I really enjoyed learning. There was recently a Wall St. Journal about Amy Chua's new book on the Eastern style of parenting.

JS: Yes! The Tiger Mom style of parenting...
MH: In essence, I think she (Chua) said that kids are not motivated to learn, that you have to have a parent pushing. It's possible that's true in the majority of cases. But for me, I really enjoyed learning. If I was interested in a subject, I'd go to the library and read every book on it. I was doing that a lot at the age of 5-6-7.

I was always one to speak up and my parents were really good at being advocates for me. Fortunately, I had the flexibility to go to a higher grade. Actually that was around the time that I started to play chess. I spent a lot of time on chess, six to seven hours a day, studying and analyzing-the same algorithm that I used to learn other subjects I would apply to chess.

JS: Did you ever feel sad that you didn't get to hang out as much with kids your age?
MH: That stuff is always a trade-off. It's not that I didn't enjoy kicking a soccer ball around with people my age...but it was always more interesting to me to interact with people that were at the same grade level than the same birth year. I spent a lot of time three younger siblings.

On talent and hard work ......

JS: What do you think about the perennial debate between genius and talent?
MH: It's impossible to get to a high level in almost any discipline without hard work. It helps to start with a high IQ or however you want to classify it. However, you have to have both to get to the elite level. Clearly someone like Anand or Aronian is a genius in addition to a hard-worker. You can probably get to 2500 with hard work. I don't think you have to be a super-genius to get 2500. To get to the stratosphere, you may have to have some genetic disposition.

Still, I think genius is over-rated. It can even hurt...one thing I always had to watch out for was getting lazy, you have a slight edge because you have a good memory or spatial ability. There always comes a point where that's not enough, and you may not be prepared for the drop-off.

JS: Is there anything you can pinpoint that your talent for chess really helps you in that someone who put in an equal amount of work might have trouble attaining?
MH: If I could point to one thing, it would be the ability to make cross-applications. For instance a theme that would normally come up in one position, you're able to recognize it in another position. But of course part of that can be trained by looking at a wider list of candidate moves.

JS: Does the word genius make you uncomfortable?
MH: I hate being called that. I think it's a word that has kind of lost meaning, because it's overused in the English language. Feynman and Einstein, I'm picking examples from physics-but it could be from any field, people who are creating revolutions in their field. They are seeing things that no one saw but afterwards is obvious. I see this as genius. I think of myself more as a smart guy who works hard and occasionally has flashes of insight.

On chess as a career ......

JS: Do you ever regret not going the route of a pro chess player?
MH: It pops in my head from time to time. On balance, I'm happy with how things turned out. I am able to live in New York and support myself and I recently got married. At the same time, the reason I decided to focus on chess during my break, and am excited about the US Chess League every year is that I love the game. I feel fortunate that I'm able to play at a competent level and thankful that I have the time and opportunity to see what I'm capable of.