Days 2 & 3

Day 2

Now that we are mostly recovered from the jet lag, we are starting to do a little more exploring of the surrounding area.  For the most part, Maribor, Slovenia looks like a little "postcard"European city.  That being said, we have encountered the odd structure here and there.  This garage door, located just down the hill from the hotel, caught our attention.

Cameron was paired against another American teammate, so that meant that he couldn't receive any preparation from the team coaches.  We took some of our extra time to explore a little further from home.  Our friends Wayne and Jeffery from Dallas are staying at a hotel at the top of the mountain.  We wanted to check out their place, so we hopped on the gondola for the short ride to the summit.

The hotel at the top has a very alpine feel to it.  The cool, fresh air reminded me of autumn in Tahoe.  We walked the premises with Jeffery and his father, and even managed to have a short snowball fight.

Jeffery was nice enough to invite us to join them for lunch.  I'll have to agree with him that while the cable car is fun and the view is fantastic, the food is better at our hotel.

Did I mention the view?

After lunch we headed down on the gondola so that I could work and Cameron could prepare for his game.

The opponent for round 2 is the young, up-and-coming Nicolas D Checa from New York.  We weren't able to locate many games for Nico, but had some confidence in what Cameron would be facing.  The opening went much as we anticipated, but it was very drawish.  As they entered the endgame, the position was a dead draw.  Cameron decided to push for a win and see if he could get Nico to crack.  Unfortunately, Nico played stout defense and Cameron over extended himself, pushed too hard, and lost the game.  Cameron was very upset, but this is a long tournament.

Day 3

As a whole, the organization and facilities at this World Youth are the best of the three that we've attended.  However, the playing hall is a bit tight.  To alleviate some of the crowding, they've instituted a rule starting in round 2 that no parents are allowed into the playing hall at all.  That means no more pictures of Cameron's opponents.

Today's opponent was Priyav Chandna from Botswana.  Turns out that there are very few competitive chess players in Africa and it was hard to find a lot of games for this opponent.  However, we did have a few and Cameron was able to prepare for the match with GM de Firmian.  Despite preparing a few ideas, none of them materialized over the board.  In fact, Cameron saw a second move he had never seen before: 1. c4 Nf6 2. g3 h5.  Coach Nick said the game was probably already over at that point :-).  Cameron played another solid game and cruised to a nice bounce back victory after yesterday's disappointment.  This is a long tournament and there is still plenty of time to make up for one mistake.