Well, it has been about 3 weeks since we returned from Greece and I finally got a spare moment to upload more photos. It was an incredible trip, and thank you to all the friends and family who cheered me on. When we got back, there was some interest in the trip from several newspapers. My coach, who won the U18 gold medal, got written up in the
San Jose Mercury News and in the
New York Times. My friends and I even got written up in our local paper, the
Cupertino Courier.
So, here is my final post about Greece, I promise:
In round 11, the final round, I was only a half-point behind the leader. A win in this round would give me the silver medal! My opponent was the dangerous Jason Cao of Canada. He had already beat Samuel Sevian and Tommy He from Team USA, and he lost a winning endgame against Jeffery Xiong. We spent a good deal of time preparing for his opening, and I got the position over the board that we had prepared for. Unfortunately, I thought I found a winning combination, but it turned out that I missed his best reply. My position quickly went from bad to worse as I blundered again. I wasn't able to save the game and my medal dreams were done. In the end, I got 5th place because of my excellent tiebreaks. In some swiss tournaments you get a lucky draw, but this definitely wasn't one of those tournaments.
One of the odder stories from this year's World Youth was my friend Allan's performance. My dad, snapped this photo of Allan telling his father that he had just drawn his 10th straight game in a row. No one could believe that this was even possible.
When the tournament finished, we still had some team obligations to fulfill. After lunch, the entire group of players and coaches assembled on the steps leading to the playing hall and we posed for many pictures as all of the parents went crazy with their cameras.
Finally we got to blow off some steam! My friends and I try to catch a wild Rayan-oceros. We had so much energy stored up that we just had to run around like crazy for a while. The parents were all exhausted, but we were ready to go. Fortunately, Rayan's dad took a bunch of us to the soccer field for our last game.
While we were all playing soccer, some of the parents snuck off to a nearby winery for a tasting. Don't they look relieved that the tournament is over?
After all of the soccer and wine tasting, it was time for the closing ceremonies. They called the top 8 finishers from each section up to the stage to receive medals. The top 3 also received a small trophy. Team USA did well in U10 with Jeffery Xiong in second, I was in 5th, Samuel Sevian was 6th, and Vignesh was 9th.
Here Samuel and I posed for a picture with silver medalist, Jeffery Xiong. I had a lot of fun with the other Team USA members and look forward to seeing them at future events.
Our flight home was at 4am the next day, so we decided to stay up late. How would you relax after a grueling 11-day chess tournament? My friends and I decided to have a blitz tournament, just for the fun of it. I won ;)
After playing blitz late into the evening, we got 2 or 3 hours of sleep in our room and then we had to take the 2-hour bus ride to the airport in Thessaloniki. Even though it is about 3am, we still had to play some blitz. Here my friend Allan is getting whipped by Anna Matlin from New Jersey.
Just like on the way to Greece, we had a seven hour layover. Uncle Harry is not one to sit around, so we took the train into town again. This time the dads were determined to find the lake. We got to walk down a lot of cool little side streets like this one.
At 7:00am on a Sunday morning, not a lot was happening in Zurich yet. The restaurants weren't even open yet, but there were a lot of birds swimming in the river.
We finally made it to the lake. Turns out we were pretty close last time, but we just didn't realize it. Joining us on this trip to the city were: Simone Liao, Joanna Liu, Vignesh, me, Allan, Kesav, and Anna Matlin.
We were all very hungry for some breakfast, but the parents were busy taking pictures of all of the buildings.
We pretty much had the city to ourselves at this hour.
The only thing open this early was a Starbucks (can you say free WiFi?). We hung out at the tables outside playing cards while we waited for a nearby restaurant to open
Finally it was 9am and we were able to go to a Swiss restaurant called Cakefriends for a traditional Swiss brunch. It was really tasty. After brunch it was back to the airport to catch our flight home.
