SPICE CUP 2021

Andy had two really bad tournaments locally that undid his progress from the norm tournament in Charlotte. One reason was that both Emily and Andy got into the video game addiction from their schools. We caught them getting up in the middle of the night playing video games on their school computers. We did our best to control the technology usage at home. But we had no control over what they did at school. Emily confessed to me that she started when she got bored at school and her classmates showed her the video games. We were tired of fighting and struggling with our kids over technology usage, the books they read, negative influence from the teachers and classmates, and the leftie education that violates the truth. Finally we decided to pull them out of the public schools. I found the homeschool curriculum was way better than what I expected. I spent the whole summer to sift through all the options and was overwhelmed by the choices. Luckily Marla invited me to her house and showed me what she was doing with her boys. I was impressed by her boys. I also was encouraged by many people I met during the summer who also homeschooled. The kids resisted in the beginning. Emily mourned when her friends dropped by on their way to school the first week. She also was sad that she lost her "National Junior Honor Society" status as well as other privileges at school. I was praying that we made the right choice for them and for our family. One month into our homeschool, we got an offer from Imagine International Academy (one of the top college-prep charter schools in TX) that is just across street from us. Both kids denied the offers. I started to feel that we made the right choices. The kids learned a lot at home. I was able to patch up the holes they had in the public schools. They really enjoyed the co-ops on Fridays. Emily had Geography and World cultures, Writing, Life science, Story telling, and PE at co-op. Andy had Geography and World cultures, Writing, and Basketball. By now, they both could draw by memory all the countries, capitals, and physical features in Africa, Middle-east, and Europe. They each did presentations on some countries reports and other things they learned. I could feel their attitudes were improving too. I just wished we had done homeschooling sooner!

Andy has way more homework at homeschool co-op than public school. But it's worth it. He learned so much more! At the same time, he struggled with his addictions to the video games that he learned from his classmates at the public school. As a result, his chess training suffered. It showed up in his tournaments. We stopped participating in the local tournaments because of that. But it costs so much to travel. We plan to play one big tournament a month. Andy gradually worked through his video game problems. The first big tournament was SPICE cup in October. We drove over nine hours to St. Louis, the chess capital in America. Andy really wanted to stop by the chess club to see the US Championships before we checked into the hotel. Unfortunately we found out it was a rest day for the players. We checked in the hotel after 9pm. Soon we heard the loud noise from above. I went down to the lobby to request to change the room. The front desk told me the hotel was full. The noise was from the wedding party above. She gave me two pairs of ear plugs. The ear plugs didn't help at all. The noise lasted past midnight. Then I was waken up by the noise next door. People came in talking and watching TV, taking showers. I could hear everything since the rooms were connected. I looked at the clock- it was 2:14am. I asked to change the room again the next morning. They again told me the hotel was full even when I saw some people from the first floor just checked out. Luckily they blocked out our connected room after my protest. I learned a lesson to always ask for the first floor and check the room first before moving in. Andy didn't do very well but he learned valuable lessons from playing against strong opponents. SPICE cup is one of the best organized tournaments we've had. I wished I brought my books so I could have planned for the lessons. I drove Bryan Xie's mom to buy grocery a couple of times. Andy got to walk in the sun for half an hour during the week. He also visited with Ryo, Bryan, and Jonathan for a while before we headed back home. We listened to the "Stories of the World" history CDs in the car and drove by the historical route 66. My phone was out of the battery as soon as we left St. Louis. But we had a smooth drive all the way home.

 

The 2021 All America Team on the US Chess Kids Magazine cover

 

 Andy ranked #2 in the world for 11 years olds and #3 for 12 years old in September 2021

 

  

 

 

Andy loves Math competition. He participated in the North American Mathcon in April/May this year and got mention of honor for MathCon math contest. Less than 1% of thousands of contestants in North America moved on to the final stage. The final contest was supposed to be in Chicago. But because of COVID, it was held online this year. Andy saw a couple of his chess friends in other grades and other states in this math competition. He won the first prize for the chess tournament after the math contest. He got invited to attend the award ceremony (3 students in McKinney ISD got mention of honor award) by McKinney ISD. But we couldn't attend it because we were on our way to Las Vegas for his chess tournament.

We celebrated David's birthday with his parents and sister's family for one weekend. The kids went to a youth retreat at church another weekend in September. So Andy lost quite some time on chess trainings.

For first day of school, the kids insisted on playing a kahoot game "Getting to Know Your Teacher (me)". They played until they both got 100% :-)

Emily helped David with his FriendSpeak ministry. She met lots of international students at the Big Howdy party in UTD.

Andy was asked to help with teaching in the chess class at co-op. He did an excellent job!

We got together with Gayla's family and friends after attending Matthew's graduation. We also got to meet some homeschool families

Andy and Emily had to do their homework for five hours until 11pm the nights before the chess tournaments. As a result, they both memorized all the fifty four countries and capitals and physical features of Africa. They could draw the countries by hand from memories. They also learned the cultures of different countries and people groups. I learned a lot just listening to the class. Andy did a presentation on Isreal. Emily is going to do a presentation on Ireland. They also did presentations in the writing class and projects in the science class. They made several friends at co-op too!

Fall is in the air. The kids had fun at our church's fall festival.

Becoming a FM

We have been postponing traveling for chess tournaments for as long as we could. Number one, it's very expensive with two people's airline tickets, hotel, food, taxi, and other expenses. Number two, it's very disruptive to our family because Emily would be left home without mommy or daddy. Number three, I just don't like fly in the airplanes. I wished there were high speed trains or buses for long distance traveling like it is in China. Andy's goal for this summer was to become a FM (Fide Master). We had to travel to play big tournaments to achieve that. He was 300 points away in the beginning of the summer. So we booked several big tournaments and he was very excited about that (at the same time, I was a little nervous). The first big tournament was National Open in Las Vegas. That was the first big domestic tournament we've been. Below was our experience:

Day1: Not long ago, ATT informed me that my phone was not supported any more. I had to buy a new phone. I have resisted against the smart phone for as long as I could. I am sad that I have to let my dumb phone go now. David got me a iphone se just in time for the big tournament. I immediately downloaded the Uber app. A couple of weeks ago, Spirit airline canceled our flight in the afternoon. We had to move it up to the morning. To save money, we didn't buy a luggage. It worked out fine. We bought four shirts to change and a small electric pot to cook. The flight was uneventful except that Andy's ears hurt when the airplane descended. After we followed the sign to the Uber garage, I used the Uber app for the first time. The normal cost to our hotel was about $13. But due to high demand, it quoted me $27. I accepted it because I didn't want to wait in the heat with Andy. A Honda SUV pulled up. The driver was a girl from middle east dressed in a yellow pants. I waved and said hi to her and she said hi back. That was the only interaction we had during the whole trip. I wanted to ask her whether she was from the middle east. But I sensed that she didn't want to talk. So I kept quiet too. We checked in the hotel pretty quick. I was taken back by all the casinos right at the hotel lobby. The views outside our big window on 19th floor was beautiful with long range of mountain spanning across in the back drop. There was no sign of life on the mountain though, not a single tree or grass. We wondered why. Andy really disliked the pictures on the wall (Monroe and Elvis). I thought he was just not like them. But he told me later that those pictures gave him bad dreams and he wouldn't sleep in the bed next to them. So I had to cover the pictures with the big black trash bags. Our room has a desk but no chair. We managed to sit on a sofa chair instead to use the computer. Andy was hungry. We went down and bought a pizza and fried sweet potatoes from the restaurant after passing through noise, smoke, and coughing people. That was the only time we bought food downstairs. Andy followed me closely. He didn't want to get lost in these maze like casinos. After we came back to the room, I got on the internet and ordered some grocery from the sprouts market; The temp outside was 112. Our grocery was delivered in about one hour. I was very happy about the ordering experience. We had the frozen dumplings for dinner. Yummy! When I checked my email after dinner, I saw the Uber charge of $47! I immediately checked what was going on. Obviously the middle east girl took us for a long circular drive. I filed a dispute and got $20 dollars back. That was not pleasant experience in Las Vegas! 

Day2: The fan in the room blew right on our beds. We had to turn it off for a while until it got hot. Then we turned it back on. Andy got stuffed nose and woke up early because of it. Besides there was noises in the middle of the night from the hallway and from up. We had eggs and toast for breakfast before we went to find the tournament hall. On the way back, I requested to change to a quieter room. Our room was changed to the 23rd floor. It made a huge difference! The new room had a different view of a golf course. It has a long granite desk with a computer chair. It was very quiet. Andy took a nap since he got up early. Then we visited with Ryo in our room and down to the tournament hall while his dad was working. The first round pairing came out after Andy's chess lesson. Luckily he prepared for his opponent before we came here. His opponent who is an IM didn't play his usual line and ended up with losing. Andy was excited to have a good start! He said his previous coach M came to look at his game. I wished we had time to formally introduce ourselves and say hello to him. Andy finished at around 11pm. We hurrily came back to the hotel room and got ready for bed.

Day3: We woke up early again, probably due to the jetlag. Andy found out the pairing was out. He wasn't playing any of the players he prepared. The pairing looked strange with several GMs playing the same colors right next to each other. Andy lost to this IM because of a mistake in the middlegame. He didn't see his opponent's best reply. There were a lot 1 point players after two rounds. The pairing didn't come out until 10 minutes before the round three. I'm sure most people didn't get to prepare. Andy's opponent was a strong FM whom we knew from World Cadet in Spain (He got the 4th place in U12 section then). Andy looked up his games briefly and he was about ten minutes late. I went to see him after three hours and saw his opponent walking bouncily in the isle. Andy was in deep thinking for a long time. I thought it was not a good sign. I waited in the lobby outside for another two hours. Finally Zura came to me saying that Andy was better and his opponent was trying to get a perpetual. I was surprised. After Andy won the game later on, he told me that he got a worse opening but better middle and end games. Andy finished at midnight and we went to bed almost one oclock in the morning. Ryo won his first OTB game against a super GM who is a famous coach at ICC.

Day 4: I let Andy slept in for as long as he could. He got up at 9:30am. We had breakfast and did a little chess. I guessed three possible opponents based on the results from last night. We found all three's games. The pairing came out 40 minutes before the round started. Suddenly we lost the WIFI. We thought it was our computer's problems. We closed all the programs and restarted the computer. It still didn't work. I checked my phone and realized I had been using my data instead of the hotel WIFI! I called the hotel lobby and was told the WIFI was broken for the whole building. Hmmm... maybe too many chess players tried to prepare all at the same time? Luckily we found Andy's opponent's games earlier this morning. Andy did some preparation. We were a few minutes late. Then at the elevator, two of the four broke. So the only working ones was either full or going the other way and stopping on every floor. We ran to a different elevator and waited for extra ten minutes. Andy ran to the tournament hall. He was probably 15 minutes late. I saw that he sat next to Ryo (it might mean distractions from each othe). His opponent spent some time for the first several moves. So it compensated part of Andy's lost time.

 

I got lazy and stopped recording the rest of the tournament. Andy had a decent tournament. He was happy to win the last game. There was a best game prize for Juniors. Andy wanted to submit one of his games to win the $300 prize. I took his game to the judge. He insisted going over it with Andy. I told him Andy didn't have time. He just wanted to enter the game for the prize. But the judge just pushed it aside. Finally Andy was able to finish his game before the judge left. They went over the game together. The judge told him "I'm sorry, I submitted the winner earlier today. If I saw your game earlier, you definitely would have won the prize. Maybe next year..." I was sad that Andy missed his prize. The judge just didn't think Andy would win until he saw his game and it was too late.

Our flight home was at midnight. We decided to see Las Vegas a little with Eric Liu's family. We watched the music fountains and visited an indoor garden. The boys had fun running around after being indoor for a week. 

After we got home, Andy started preparing for World Open. One night when I said Good Night to him, I saw him crying in bed. I asked why. He finally told me that he wished we had enough money so that he could go to Philadelphia International tournament which was right before World Open. David and I thought for a while. We booked the tickets to Philadelphia that was only two days away. The tickets was very expensive and the hotel was all booked. We stayed at the overflow hotel for the first three days. Andy had a strong beginning. Then he lost strength during the second half. Our hotel room didn't have refrigerator. We bought food from the China town restaurants. David and Emily joined us for World Open. We moved to an airbnb apartment.  David and Emily got to tour around Philadelphia and New York. We all visited our old friends Zhu Jing and Heidi in NY before we headed back home. Ryo's dad and Louis from DCC told us Andy got his FM in the middle of Philadelphia International. We didn't know it until we confirmed with Grant at the Charlotte Norms tournament a month later.

We got an invitation to play at Charlotte GM/IM norms in late July. There was not much time to prepare. But Andy had always wanted to play that tournament. So we accepted the invitation. The flight was expensive. So I decided to drive there. It took us three days to drive there and two days to drive back. We finished listening "The Stories of the World" CDs two times! Andy stopped at every state border to take pictures. The Four Point hotel was the best hotel we've stayed. Andy had a decent tournament although he didn't get an IM norm. One of his opponents asked him for a quick draw because his opponent was tired (he traveled with his girl friend and lost in a winning position the previous round). He thought it was more important to be kind than to win. So he agreed to a draw although he prepared well for that game. His last opponent also asked for a draw because his opponent only needed a draw to get a norm. He thought it would be mean if he turned down and make his opponent lose the norm. After I found out, I had to talk with him about being fair. Anyway his FIDE rating went up to 2337 and USCF rating 2343. He had a good summer!Wi

 

First meal in Las Vegas 

With his chess buddy Ryo

Wait for the elevators

The views outside our window

The De Soto bridge across the Mississippi river (We just learned about De Soto in our American History curriculum)

 As usual, we had many animal visitors during the summer: ducks, doves, turtles, horses, rabbits, squarrels, humming birds, and four cute Amadellios. Emily had set up a home for blue birds. Two beautiful blue birds raised babies there. The first family had to fight against Mocking birds and squirrels and won the battle.

 

Four Amadellio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N2v4ZA9Jno

 

The battle between the blue birds and squarrel:

 

 

Andy played a chess game and a piece of music tandem. He was able to win before he finished the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKJw-ClWMXQ

 

Duet from Emily and Andy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq9a3AIk3uw