2012 K12 Grade Level Nationals - Dec 2, 2012

In round 6, Cameron played Jonathan Chiang and only managed to draw.  In round 7, he is playing Jason Shi.

Last Day - December 2 - 2012 K12 Grade Level Nationals - Orlando, Florida

Today Cameron received his fourth All-American Team jacket, being named a member of the 2013 All American Team. They always put his name on the jacket, and this year, he opted to have "Caminator" embroidered instead of his name. It's such an honor to be named with an elite group of young scholastic chess players. 

Today, team Kennedy has 12.5 points. They are ahead of IS 318 by 2.5 points. We hope we can maintain that lead to take the team championships.

Cameron is playing Jonathan Chiang on board 1. There are currently three players with a perfect 5-0 record.  Jonathan, Cameron and David Floeder from MN followed by 11 players with 4-0, including fellow Kennedy Team Mate Pranav Srihari, then 6 players with 3.5, including Kennedy Team Mate, Kingsley Wang.  Let's go Team Kennedy.

December 1 - Rounds 3-5 - K12 Grade Level Nationals - Orlando, Florida

	Cameron's third round opponent, Brittany Nguyen. It's the second girl Cameron has played in this tournament. It's interesting that there are not many girls playing chess and Cameron plays two in the last three rounds. He won this game. Since the round started at 10:00 a.m. we were a little late to this round and had to run to the playing hall. The clocks were just starting when Cameron entered.
	Cameron's fourth round opponent, Prateek Pinisetti. this was Cameron's longest game so far. He was losing in the opening, but ended up winning in the end. This game had him a little worried. This time Cameron's opponent arrived a little late to the round, Cameron thought Prateek was doing some preparation for the opening because he played the opening very well. Cameron is now 4-0.
	Cameron's fifth round opponent, fellow Californian Art Zhao, the two have met many times. Unfortunately Art had to be black twice in a row. Cameron was due to be white and because he is higher rated, he got his color and Art had to be black two times in a row. Cameron wins this round and is no2 5-0.

We did take time to go to Downtown Disney. We went to Wolfgang Pucks Pizzeria and walked the length of Downtown. We took pictures where the boys would cooperate. It was the fastest that I've ever been in and out of Downtown Disney, I didn't have any time to to shop or have fun :-(.

2nd Round Update

Round 2 Opponent Jake Hum From Arizona

Cameron won this match in 33 moves.  The opponent, Jake Hum, played the opening a little weird and blundered both of his bishops on moves 18 and 19, which gave Cameron a huge advantage, and he was able to checkmate shortly after that.

We are hoping that his team mates finish early, and we can take a quick trip to Downtown Disney tonight.

Unfortunately, Kingsley lost to William Graif.  He played a long game and almost ran out of time, ended up blundering with five minutes left on the clock.  Pranav won, so that leaves team Kennedy with 5 points, tied with the prestigious Chess School IS 318.

Tomorrow Pranav's opponent Christopher Rush is from IS 318 so it's a decisive match for the team. 

Arrived in Orlando Florida for 2012 K12 Grade Level Nationals - November 29 & 30th

	We flew to Orlando from San Francisco with fellow team mate Pranav Srihari and his mom Vanitha. Here are the boys at the airport waiting to board the plane. Most people think we are a little crazy coming to Florida, right after Slovenia. I'd have to say I agree completely. We really didn't factor in the Thanksgiving week off, and Cameron only attending three days of school before he was out on Thursday & Friday. He has a lot of homework to catch up on.
Cameron met with David Pruess from Chesskid.com to talk about creating some chess videos over the winter break. His videos will cover his games from 2012 World Youth Chess Championships in Maribor, Slovenia. We are looking forward to this challenge and hope that it will provide Cameron another outlet for his chess skills. Usually he is not too excited to try new things, but he seems to be jumping into this head first. He's watched a lot of chess videos and knows chess, so I guess it's not all that new to him! Keep your eyes open for the videos at http://chesskid.com.
	At the opening ceremonies, before round 1 began, they made a special announcement about Cameron winning the silver medal in Slovenia. They had him walk onto the stage to take a bow. It's a good thing Cameron was listening because I was talking to Vanitha, and Cameron said to me, "Mom, they are going to say my name", and he had to run up on stage for a bow. I barely got this photo before they rushed him off the stage.

Round 1 - Begins. Cameron is playing Emily McClanahan from Illinois, Pranav is playing Aidan Taylor from Virgina, Kingsley is playing Tony Bernardo from Florida (Not Pictured). Let's go Team Kennedy.
Here's Team Kennedy all together.  All three boys won their first match today.

It is over!

Sorry for the lack of updates.  Things have been a bit hectic around here.   Here is a very brief update, more later...

Cameron continued his hot streak after the rest day, beating Timur Trubchaninov (Russia), Harsha Bharathakoti (India), and Puranik Abhimanyu (India) in the next three rounds to take over sole possession of first place. In the 10th and penultimate round he faced teammate and world #1, Samuel Sevian. After a long and well fought battle, he lost. In the final round, Cameron played Parham Maghsoodloo of Iran and won the game to finish with 9 out of 11 rounds. Zhu Yi (China) on board 3 won to finish with 9. The top board, Samuel and Savelliy Golubov (Russia) drew so now there is a 4-way tie for first place. We are anxiously awaiting the official standings to find out who won the title.

Check back later for an update and some pics from the awards ceremony...

The "Rest" Day

Two years ago, when we went to the World Youth in Porto Carras, Greece, we took a tour of Thessaloniki on our rest day.  While I really enjoyed the trip, Cameron remembers it as being quite boring and tiring.  Most of all, he really wanted to avoid riding on a bus for several hours.

This year, the tournament organizers had arranged several interesting looking excursions, but each involved at least 3 and up to 7 hours of bus rides.  Cameron declared that he was not interested, and I reluctantly agreed.

With the organized excursions ruled out, Cameron and I had a "choose your own adventure" kind of day.  We slept in as late as possible and ate a leisurely breakfast.  After the meal, we headed up the gondola to the top of the mountain.  On our previous trip to the top, our friend Jeffery told us that he wanted to play ping pong with us.  We didn't have a definite plan, but we decided to stop by their room, just in case. Fortunately we caught Jeffery and his father Wayne as they were leaving their room to go play badminton.  Turns out the weather outside was not ideal for badminton, so we took a short walk in the cool air.  After the walk, we went downstairs to the gymnasium to play ping pong.  Once there, we were joined by brother Tan and Trung Nguyen of Virginia.  We played many games of Around the World and both kids and Dads had a great time.  I'm sure Jeffery will post a full crosstable for the event as he was quite keen on tabulating everyone's score.

After ping pong, we headed back to the gondola to figure out our next plan.  We ran into Craig and his father trying to catch the next one down.  Unfortunately for them, the gondola was shutting down for an hour.  We convinced them to walk down the mountain with us.  We started off descending the main ski slope which was quite steep in places and very slick with the recent rains.  Despite a couple of slips, nobody got seriously hurt (a few bruised egos and some muddy clothes).  Eventually we made it to a flatter trail and it was actually quite beautiful.  The whole descent only took us an hour and it probably would have been much quicker if the terrain had been a bit dryer.

One of the nice features of this year's organization is that your official accreditation is also valid as a bus pass on all the city's buses.  When we reached the bottom of the hill, we hopped on a bus for the short ride into the heart of Maribor's Old City.  Maribor is a very nice small city with only 100,000 inhabitants, but it has many nice old churches and castles to look at.  The city is also part of a popular wine growing region.  Here Cameron is sampling some of the city's finest, just like his Mom would do.

One of the popular tourist spots in Maribor is known as the Old Vine.  The grape vine in the background is over 400 years old and still produces fruit.  The vine grows on a trellis which spans the entire of facade of the building behind the boys.  Each year they harvest 35 to 55 Kg of grapes from the vine and produce approximately 100 bottles of wine.  As you can imagine, these bottles are quite prized.

In town we had a little pizza and ice cream to break up the monotony of the hotel food, and then hopped on the bus for the short ride back to our room.  After the busy day, it was time for some relaxation and then studying for the next opponent.  In round 7, Cameron will face Timur Trubchaninov from Russia on board 2.  Timur already has draws against the #1 and #8 seeds and he defeated the #3 seed, so we know that this game will not be easy.