I can't believe four years have eclipsed since our last post. Where did time go? Needless to say, our life has changed a lot since then. I decided to catch up on some highlights whenever I have a chance, mainly during Andy's chess tournaments when I sat out in the lobby waiting for him.
One of the main themes in our recent years is Andy's chess progress. In this post (http://woodwardbuzz.blogspot.com/2017/06/), I briefly talked about how Andy started chess when he turned seven years old. In his first tournament (March 2017) he played against a 200 ELO girl. During the game, he told that girl "You can actually checkmate me by ...". Of course his opponent did just what he told her and checkmated him. He came out running into Daddy's arms with tears. He learned what not to do in a chess tournament :-) Over the years, he lost many games and he seldom cried. He learned to give God praises when he wins and thank God for the lessons learned when he loses. I learned lots of lessons from him too.
After winning several scholastic tournaments, we decided to take Andy to Dallas Chess Club to play against stronger opponents every Friday night. It was tough in the beginning. Strong opponents plus late evenings. David drove him as soon as we had dinners and they would come home at 11pm even he always took the last round byes. Week after week, hard work paid off. Andy's rating increased quickly. He always used the David against Goliath Bible story to motivate himself.
The first big tournament was the Southwest Open during the Labor Day weekend (about six months after he started playing chess). David's birthday was that weekend too. He had to sit out in the hotel lobby. We all sat there waiting for Andy. Like most scholastic tournaments, kids and parents were everywhere. We had a table in the far end of the lobby. Andy would come to find us after he finished each round. He notated all his rounds but one. I urged him to find his opponent for the notation. He said "Don't worry mom, I remembered it." He sat down and replayed the whole game with 60+ moves! I was amazed. He won all his seven games and got the first place as a gift for David's birthday gift.
He continued taking the group lessons at Imagine chess club until he outgrew it by the end of the school year. We also bought him about ten private lessons. The private lessons were expensive ($100/hour) for us. In December 2017, we decided to sponsor a girl from Kenya for school through Compassion International. So we stopped the private lessons. Now we have two kids to sponsor: one in El Salvador; the other in Kenya!
(Beth is four days older than Emily. We loved writing to her and reading her letters through the years)
Andy continued playing almost weekly at DCC. David took him Friday evenings and I took him on Saturdays occasionally. He was the youngest player there. One time he played against an adult. He went to the bathroom during the game. When he came back to his seat, he saw that his opponent reset the chess board. He almost cried "Excuse me, I just went to the bathroom - I didn't resign ..." His opponent replied calmly "I resigned."
Another time we all went with Andy for a weekend tournament. About half way through, he came to me saying his tummy hurt badly. I gave him some homeopathic beads. It didn't help. Within minutes he started jumping up and down. Then he rolled into a ball on the floor crying. I really thought something serious was going on. David decided to take him to the closest hospital. It was raining really hard. Emily and I took our belongings to follow behind, only found out that David had grabbed my keys. We had to stay behind to wait for them. Emily and I found a small room/library to sit in. We prayed for God to heal Andy quickly. After the prayer, we called David. He said they got to the hospital's waiting room. Then Andy felt better. They decided to come back without seeing the doctor. The TD Lois let Andy continue his game against a higher rated opponent (his opponent waited for him for 15 minutes). They ended up a draw. We thanked God for answering our prayers so quickly!
Andy's rating increased to 1600s in Feb. 2018. He qualified for the World Cadet Under 8 section. We thought that might be the only opportunity that he would be qualified for a world event. Rachael Li is a very experienced girl chess player who was top rated in Andy's age group. His brother is the famous young GM Ruifeng Li. Rachael Li's Dad told me it was waste of money if Andy's rating was below 1800s. In his words, the purpose of participating in that type of tournament was to get the medals. But for us, we didn't have a high expectation for Andy. The purpose was to experience that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity :-) Besides, my sister's family was in Spain at that time. It would be nice if we could visit them! We decided to take him to Spain for the tournament and look for a private coach to prepare him.We couldn't find any coaches locally because of their busy schedules during the summer. Finally we found coach A online right before the Labor Day to teach Andy. They had two months to prepare for the big tournament. We flew to Spain on November 2nd. My brother-in-law who worked in Spain then lent his car to us. Andy didn't do well. He got the 24th place. But he got to meet one of his best chess friends Raj for the first time. He also gained valuable experience in the international tournament. Raj won the U8 championship. Coach A asked Andy to continue working with him after the tournament. It was a big investment for us. But we didn't want to regret about not giving Andy chances to pursue his dreams in the future. After many prayers, we agreed. Andy prayed to be able to qualify for World Cadet in 2019 one night. He achieved his goal right before the new year.
Coach A mainly worked with Andy's openings. When Andy asked whether he could learn some middlegame strategies or pawn structures, he didn't respond. We thought the $120/hour lesson was too expensive for us. We changed the coach. We are thankful that coach A helped Andy to have a solid opening repertoire. At Southwest Class in Feb 2019, we met Ryo who just moved from Japan to Houston. We saw him in Spain at World Cadet. Andy and Ryo became quick friends. Ryo became an expert in that tournament. Andy had a strong beginning (he won the game against Ryo) and got worse for the second part of the tournament. Part of the reason was me. To save on the hotel cost, I changed our hotel from the nice tournament hotel to a cheap one that was ten minutes drive away. After Andy finished his 4th round, we drove to the new hotel to check-in, only to find out that the room was not ready yet. We waited until it was ready. We checked in a dark crowded room, unpacked everything. Then we found out the toilet was not working. We had to pack up and change to a different room. Andy lost two hours of resting time. He was exhausted. But I had to wake him up from the 15-min deep nap. He had his first loss. Then the next morning we were waken up by the noise of talking right outside our window at 5am - it probably was from the shuttle driver and the hotel guests who tried to catch the early flight. The noise lasted for a long while. Andy and I got up and had our breakfast. It was Sunday morning. So we did some Bible reading before we left for the tournament. We read about Joshua's battle against Amorites where God held sun still to give time for Joshua to succeed. After the devotional, we set out to the tournament hotel. As soon as we entered the glass door, GM Julio ran to Andy "Hurry Andy! You are fine ..." He quickly guided Andy to his seat while all other players played quietly already in the tournament hall. I sensed something was wrong. TD Lois came to me saying that Andy was 59 minutes late (he would have forfeited at 60 mins. Thank you God for holding time still for Andy so he didn't forfeit)! Andy's opponent from previous round told Zura after she noticed that Andy wasn't there. Zura then asked Julio who was the captain of the UTD chess team to call David. Julio waited at the door until he saw us. My heart pounded rapidly and I didn't realize the last day rounds had different starting times. I couldn't imagine what was in Andy's mind. "Sorry Andy!" I silently said. Andy made a draw under severe time pressure. Then he lost his last round. I learned a good lesson about hotels.
I took Andy to Houston for Lone Star Open tournament in March. It was the first time we played out of the town. We were happy to see Ryo there. There were two sections: Open and U2000. According to Rachael Li's dad's advice, I put Andy in the U2000 section. He was among the top rated players. He had a bad tournament, losing or drawing to all lower rated players. He started being afraid of losing to the lower rated players. That Sunday morning, we didn't take a bye as we normally did on Sunday mornings to go to church. Andy told me later: "Mommy, I wish we were at church; I missed the Bible classes ..." I apologized "I'm sorry! I didn't know you wanted to learn Bible more than playing chess. Now I know. I'll request byes on Sunday mornings in the future." So Andy took byes for most of Sundays to go to church. We were asked by many parents and players why since Andy missed out many opportunities to play higher rated players or top seeds on Sunday mornings. But we think it's worth it. There will always be tournaments. Chess is a long journey. We are happy to see Andy grow physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.
The next big tournament was Texas Amateur and Open during the Memorial weekend. David's parents came in town. We planned to take two byes (one Saturday night and one Sunday morning for church) to spend some time with grandparents. After the first round, we waited in a different hotel lobby for a couple of hours since the tournament hotel was too crowded. I dropped Andy off at the front door and went around to look for a parking spot. After I parked the car, I was surprised to see Andy at the door. He told me he had a bye. I took him to the TD to see why. The TD showed me that in the registration form "Byes needed:__", I wrote 2 (what I meant was to take two byes; but the TD meant was to take the 2nd round bye). I completely misunderstood the question! We had to wait out the 2nd round in the car and play the 3rd round instead. When Andy called Daddy telling him that he couldn't spend more time with grandpa and grandma, he cried ... I felt so bad for my mistake. A couple of years later, I heard someone else made the same mistake. The parents checked byes for all rounds and the player missed pairings for two rounds before the parents found out why. After that Lois reworded the question as "Rounds that need a bye:"
Besides playing at DCC, Andy really liked North Texas Chess Academy. Chris and Jeff made NTCA an ideal place for kids to learn and play chess. Their love for chess and for children exudes in everything. Andy played many tournaments on Sunday afternoons there. He also loved the summer camps there.
OK. Enough chess. Here are some pictures of others things happened in our family in 2018 (the order might be messed up and the text might be disorganized. I may fix them later when I have time)
Our church chili-cookoff contest: I won the spiciest chili award
(Picture with Mrs. Harman after the recital)
(Play date with Austin and Dillon)
(We had a July 4th party at our house. Andy's chess friends from Austin joined us later)
(Feeding the ducks)
(Andy playing at NTCA)
