Day 6 - Double Day Round 3 & 4

Today we had to get up early to make the 10:00 a.m. round.  I woke up a little before 9:00 and I was trying to get Cameron to have some breakfast.  If his round went 5 hours he would miss lunch and breakfast might be his only time to eat.  He has such a hard time eating when he's stressing about chess, which just makes me get even more stressed out.  He forced some food down, and off we went to the round.  This time it was much better, they let everyone into the playing hall and made the main aisle wider so people could walk inside.  My third round opponent was a CM Gabriel Kimelman fromUruguay.

3rd Round Opponent - Gabriel Kimelman from Uruguay

Cameron won this game fairly quickly so he had time to analyze with Yury, eat Lunch, and rest before next round.

Next up was a very strong player from Germany, Thore Perske.  Unfortunately Cameron lost this battle in 3 hours.  He went to analyze with Coach Yury, have dinner and then relax reading before going to bed.  Lucas and Rob arrive tomorrow so this may be the last good night sleep that we both get in Brazil.

4th Round Opponent Thore Perske from Germany

Often time people ask what a tournament is like.  This picture below shows how crowded and chaotic this tournament is.  The playing hall is really too small to support this many boards.  This tournament has been unlike any I've attended in the past.  There are 1120 players from 80 countries.  Nationals are as big, I believe but much more organized and people all speak the same language.   The USA has the largest team outside of South America (Brazil, Argentina & Peru are ahead of them).  In Brazil very few people speak English and communication is very difficult.  I had heard that you can possible get by with Spanish but not really.  It's like playing a game of charades every day.  Which is very funny.  We went to town today and Tarun & Harry were trying to ask taxi drivers what the cost was to pick up their families from the airport and drive them to Caldas Novas.  They wanted to also go with the driver to the airport so their wives would recognize this.  This was all communicated via drawing and hand signals.

Playing hall before Round 4