Blog Archives - Princeton Chess Academy

Princeton Chess Academy

Wesley So: Life at the top

2/26/2015

Wijk aan Zee has been a special place for So ever since he made his debut there in 2009 as a 15-year-old grandmaster from the Philippines, taking first place in Group C of the Corus tournament.

Last January, he played in Group A for the second time, under the flag of the United States for the first time, and delivered the best performance of his young career so far. He finished in a tie for 2nd-5th places, just half a point behind world champion Magnus Carlsen, and ended up eventually in 4th place after the Sonneborn-Berger tiebreak.

After his +4 result in that Category 20 event on the strength of five wins, seven draws, and one loss (8.5/13), he rose to #7 in the world rankings and overtook Hikaru Nakamura as the #1 player in America. He also achieved his highest rating ever: 2788, just 12 rating points away from his goal of reaching 2800 this year.

As the newest member of the chess elite, he is now getting invitations to some of the world’s highest-rated events. Just two weeks after Tata, he accepted invitations to play in the Gashimov Memorial in Shamkir, Azerbaijan, and Dortmund Sparkassen in Germany.

These are the kinds of events that So needs and wants in order to continue his impressive rise in the world rankings. But as new opportunities open up, he has to make a lot of adjustments in his new life as one of the world’s best.

His next major event will be the U.S. Championships, scheduled March 31 to April 14 in Saint Louis, Missouri, the chess capital of the United States. This will be an all-GM event, and projected to be a Category 16 tournament. Gata Kamsky, a former challenger for the world championship, is the defending champion. But, two months before the first move is made, many chess fans in the Philippines and the U.S., as well as many Filipinos around the world, have been anticipating fierce rivalry between So and Nakamura. And chess promoters and tournament organisers are already watching what promises to be a compelling rivalry for many years to come.

See article.

Steps Classes in Spring 2015

2/25/2015

Princeton Chess Academy is pleased to announce the following Step classes in Spring 2015:

Step 1, unit 2: 1:30 - 2:35pm
Step 2, unit 1: 2:45 - 3:50pm
Step 2, unit 2: 4:00 - 5:05pm

Saturdays 2015: 3/21, 3/28, 4/11, 4/25, 5/2, 5/9, 5/16, 5/23, 6/6, 6/13

See details at http://www.princetonchessacademy.com/steps-class-schedule.html

Chess-Steps has been developed in 1987 by Rob Brunia and Cor van Wijgerden in order to teach children to play chess.

Embraced by the Royal Dutch Chess Federation Chess-Steps became the single most popular method in The Netherlands. It spread throughout Europe and is now available world wide, including the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.. Chess-Steps is praised as one of the most innovative chess instructional programs in the world.

Princeton Chess Academy is the first chess school in USA that fully adopts the Steps Method system to teach kids chess, incorporating the Russian chess school material and the Chinese training methodology.

We also offer Tactic Workshop for tournament players.

Former chess prodigy considers new run at grandmaster title

2/24/2015

Sarwer's background is an unconventional one. Home-schooled by his father, Sarwer and his sister traveled across North America and the World while his chess talent developed. He learned the game at age four, and by six was granted a lifetime membership in the Manhattan Chess Club in New York.

"I started chess by playing with toy dinosaurs when I was a very young boy," Sarwer said over the weekend, "lining them all up. Then I found chess pieces. A lot of people get into games who are into math. And I got into chess because it was aesthetical. I just loved the way the pieces looked and that made me love the game."

Jeff Sarwer (born May 14, 1978 in Kingston, Ontario) is a Canadian-Finnish former child chess prodigy whose charismatic personality and chess talent made him a well known media figure. His chess career and his family's unconventional lifestyle were the subjects of many articles and TV shows. Jeff's attacking playing style was often compared to Bobby Fischer, and a tournament game drawn against him by another young chess player, Joshua Waitzkin, was the inspiration for the climax in the 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer.

Jeff Sarwer won the Under Ten World Youth Chess Championship in Puerto Rico in 1986 representing Canada. When he was eight, he was believed by many to be one of the strongest prodigies in the history of the game. Allen Kaufman, head of the American Chess Foundation, said, "Jeff at nine is stronger than Bobby was at 11." Bruce Pandolfini said, "Of the several thousand kids I've taught, Jeff is certainly the most amazing young player I've ever seen."

Given a tumultuous family situation which only got more complex, Sarwer was pushed away from chess as he grew older. Now in his late 30s, Sarwer says he's enticed to revisit his first love and take it to the next level.

See the full article, and 2010 interview.

写在Qiyu Zhou获世界冠军之后

2/17/2015

Read William's blog in Chinese.

Interview with IM Milan Zajic

2/17/2015

IM Milan Zajic, 16 years old talented chess player from Serbia with current rating 2452, continues his amazing string of successful performances, winning the strong “Georgi Tringov” Memorial Open Tournament in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Zajic head the field of 289 players, including 14 GMs and 23 IMs, performing 2622 ELO, adding 23 new points to his rating and fulfilling his second GM norm.

Q: Hi, Milan! Could you please tell us how you got attracted to chess, when did you learn to play and who showed you the first moves?
A: Hi! I started playing chess at the age of 6. My grandfather taught my brother Milun and me how to play. It was very interesting for me to watch them play, so I really wanted to learn the game.

Q: How do you prepare for tournaments? Who is your coach and how often do you train together?
A: I don’t conduct any specific preparation for tournaments. Generally I strive to improve my game, analyze my own games and correct mistakes. I also analyze games of the greatest players. My current trainer is IM Miodrag Perunovic. We’ve been working together for two years and I think that he is one of the best chess coaches in the world. He helped me stabilize my opening repertoire, get rid of some weaknesses, correct particular mistakes and become more stable psychologically during the game. Usually, we train two times per week.

Q: How do you approach chess training and do you have any idol in chess?
A: I don’t have any idols in chess since I believe that every player has their own style of play and every (professional) player has different strengths and weaknesses. Training chess was never a burden for me. I’ve always enjoyed studying it, imagining that every second of training makes me a better player. My belief is that success is when you do what makes you happy and when you don’t look at the clock secretly hoping for the training to end. In short, you have to enjoy what you are doing. Despite my trainer helping me a lot, working alone is crucial for achieving any significant success.

See interview.

Should I Sign My Children Up For Chess Tournaments?

2/16/2015

You might be wondering if your children are ready to play in their first chess tournament. How good do they need to be in order to register them for one?

The answer is the same for all children. They need to know how to play according to the basic rules of the game. That’s all!

So why start tournaments early in life? What are the benefits?

While playing games at home or at school is fun, playing in a tournament is a truly memorable experience. It’s just so exciting! And a child’s chess-playing ability often skyrockets as soon as he or she start playing in tournaments.

See the article at ChessKid.com.

Rochelle Ballantyne, 17, Aims To Be First African-American Female Chess Master

2/12/2015

Rochelle's the only girl featured in Brooklyn Castle, and she has her sights set on becoming the first African-American female master in the history of chess. It's been four years since filming of this documentary commenced—Rochelle is now a high school senior—but her name is still at the top of I.S. 318's list of best players. We spoke to her about competing against mostly male players and making plans for college.

Q: What motivated you to start playing chess?
A: My grandmother taught me to play when I was in the third grade. I was really active as a child, and she wanted to find a way to keep me relaxed and get my brain going.

Q: When did you begin to take chess seriously?
A: The first time that I won a national tournament when I was in the fifth grade. I won fourth place at the Girls National Championship and that's when I thought, I could really be good at this.

Q: What's driving you to become the first African-American female master in the history of chess?
A: My grandmother. When I first started playing, she introduced to me the idea of being the first African-American female chess master. I didn't think about it much because for me it seemed like an impossible feat, and I didn't think it could happen. I wasn't as focused and dedicated as I am now. I didn't think I was a good chess player—people told me I was, but it wasn't my mentality at that moment. But then after she died, that really affected me, because she was the one person that always had confidence in me. She never pushed me, and she always respected me for who I was. I have to reach that goal for her.

Q: How does playing chess impact your academic life?
A: Chess makes me think. It helps me in school, and it can really help in the college applications. It motivates me and makes me push myself harder.

See the interview in 2012. Rochelle is attending Stanford right now.

Chess For Kids: online and free

2/10/2015

Among the most popular programs by ChessBase, is the series designed to teach chess to children, "Fritz and Chesster". Until now it was only available on CD from the shop, but now you can enjoy the fun and games approach for free on the web. The colorful cartoons, with cute mini-games to teach the moves, can now be accessed from any browser, even on a mobile device.

See the news release.

Darrian Robinson, competitive chess player

2/9/2015

Like many of her fellow students at the University of Chicago, Darrian Robinson texts frequently, is in a sorority and likes to spend her free time binge-watching popular TV shows, like "Orange Is the New Black" and "New Girl."

But among the accomplishments that set her apart is a significant one: Robinson is currently the highest-rated female African-American chess player in the U.S., according to the U.S. Chess Federation, and at press time was ranked 1,707 overall of 54,243 players.

Q: How often do you practice?
A: Now that I'm in college, I don't practice as much as I should. But when I was younger, I'd practice a lot. I went to a specialized middle school that was very big on chess. I would practice two hours each day in school, then I'd practice with my coach once a week between an hour and two hours. Every weekend I'd play.

Q: How do you think playing chess has benefited you?
A: I think being the highest-rated African-American female chess player in the U.S. has helped me stand out from the crowd. It's something most people don't have under their belts. It helped me get into college. I remember the person who read my application to the University of Chicago came up to me during the meet-and-greet for incoming first-year students, and he remembered me immediately and that I played chess competitively.

See the interview.

He could really focus on it!

2/5/2015

Henrik and his wife Sigrun, both engineers by profession, didn’t realize their son had anything special in him until at the age of 8, when Magnus started focusing on chess, distancing himself from almost everything else in the world. That was three years after his father, also an internationally rated chess player, taught him the game.

Q: How was Magnus as a child different from his three sisters?
A: He wasn’t different at all as child. He was pretty much the same as his sisters. We didn’t notice anything unusual at all. For instance, I am good with numbers. So was Magnus till he turned 5, but after that, he didn’t take interest in numbers at all. Honestly, it took us a long time to figure out that Magnus could be good at chess or be different from his sisters in any way at all. So the way we brought him up wasn’t different at all from the way we raised our other children.

Q: At what point did you realize that he was a gifted chess player?
A: When he started taking interest in chess, he could really focus on it. He wasn’t interested in anything else at all. It was only then that we realized that Magnus could focus on only one thing, unlike other children who would be interested in several things. For Magnus, it was chess and chess alone. That was the time when we realized that he was somewhat different from other children of his age. He must have been 8 or 9 at that time. By the time, he turned 9 or nine-and-a-half, he started beating me at chess. So, looking at his drive from within, we thought maybe Magnus wants to play chess seriously.

See the old interview before 2013 World Championship.