General Info.
If you would like to name a tournament that one can profoundly practice stress management, consider CYCC: Canadian Youth Chess Championship.
The ultimate goal of CYCC is to select top three players of each age category and send them to World Youth Chess Championship, North America Youth Chess Championship or Pan-America Youth Chess Championship.
It is an annual event, with 2017 edition hosted in Sault College, Salt St Marie, Ontario.
It is relatively more difficult to play under U14 when you are still 12 years old. But this is chess: challenge accepted.
The most difficult part in such tournament is always the stress management. Kids usually are over-stressed due to multiple stressors. To make it such a trip, the following requirements need to be met:
- Parents have to take time off. A week at least.
- Budget wise, get $2,000 ready just for this tournament, training fees not included.
- The parent in tow need to be:
- a cheer leader
- a butler
- a driver
- a counselor
- an adviser
- a physical trainer
- a nutritionist
- a psychologist
Despite the stress, this tournament is a wonderful opportunity for chess kids. Kids experience the thrill of playing chess alongside talented peer who love chess with the passion that they share. The beauty is that they inspire each other by their passion. After the tournament, you may find your kids have new light in their eyes which sparkles while they are stumbling in the tunnel. Besides, to me, it is also a valuable journey, teaching me to grow as a parent.
Trip
This year, again, we had Lily’s family together with us: Coco, Ma Jin, Lily and Little Ma. The road trip from Montreal to Sault St Marie was super long.
As there were 3 kids in the car, we decided to take it easy and not to be too stressed about the schedule. We stopped to have a dinner at a small restaurant. When we went outside, we met a cop with his awesome squad car. Little Ma was welcomed to take a photo with him in front of the cruiser. Man, what a day for Little Ma!
We stopped at a motel around 9PM for the night. When we were checking in, we met several cool bikers who coincidentally checked in the same hotel as us. I was wondering how it was like to be a bike cruising on the open road in summer. The air must smell like “freedom”….
When we woke up, Coco went grabbing breakfast for us. We had hearty Tim Horton breakfast right before we hit the road again.
We continued our trip. It was around 16 hours driving in total. Thanks to Coco and Majin, I did not need to drive throughout the trip. But I had this chronic pains in my leg to deal with, which hunts me whenever I sit over 30 minutes. A long car trip is usually a true torture for me.
Qiuyu listened to audio for most of the trip. Sometimes he was staring at the front, with his solemn face.
Are you worried about the coming tournament?
Do you believe in yourself?
Gear for long trip – audio
We stopped for ice cream in the middle of nowhere. It was a small booth with no one in it. You have to ring the bell which was attached to the pole in front of the booth. Then someone came to serve：
We arrived at the hotel late afternoon: Super 8. Gladly, we quickly found out that there was a Japanese/korean Sushi place right beside the hotel. The first meal turned out to be amazing. We loved it!
We tried different dishes which were never disappointing, including a Sushi buffet on Saturday evening. It was just amazing! Kids especially loved the ice cream!
The hotel room is spacious; it reminded me of the hotel at Batumi last year at the World Youth Chess Championship.
It has a warm atmosphere; the stuff is very friendly and helpful. They found Qiuyu’s watch and returned it to him. I left behind my glasses when we checked out, but they shipped them to me when they found it. In the morning, I complained about the noise during the night. They moved us to a super quiet room upstairs without any trouble for me.
To me, it was superb experience with this hotel. I rated it 5 stars.
The tournament hall is only 7 minutes walking away. We walked to the hall sometimes:
Or like this:
Tournament
Kids are locked down in the play hall which is a gymnasium of the university, with parents peering from a glass wall away. With the cameras onsite, parents can spy on the entire hall through multiple screens installed at different places such as the cafeteria and the lounge.
I spent most of the time working from the cafeteria and occasionally looked at the screen searching for Qiuyu. Most of the time, Lily finished sooner than Qiuyu and her family would go for lunch/dinner first. They sometimes helped packing our lunch and getting them ready for Qiuyu so that we can skip the long wait time.
The last but third game was with Nicholas. He was the best players in Qiuyu’s section last year and got FM title at NAYCC.
In end game, Qiuyu had one pawn down and the position was drawish. He proposed a draw; Nicholas declined. Qiuyu then realized that he was facing a cliff ahead: either step forward to commit suicide or just step back to fight to the end.
Surprisingly, he launched a long thinking process and after maybe 25 minutes he fired a long series of chaos.
After a long waiting outside, I gave up my goal of being nonchalant and accepted my maternal protection mode: I started watching the game anxiously.
After 73 moves, the position looked like the chart above.
He had one pawn up but still proposed a draw due to lack of time. By the time a draw was fixed, 6 hours have passed and both of the players and parents were exhausted. I am amazed by his stamina and endurance in this game. Unconsciously, I always have such moment engraved in my heart, which then motivates me later on at some point to continuously support him no matter what.
We had a hearty dinner that day. Everything tasted so good after a battle like this.
The second day, he lost the game to Eugene Hua. They had several encounters before. Eugene has relatively higher Fide rating. Perhaps there are some psychological factors here.. Losing obviously upset him. I took him for a long walk. He was upset not just because of the losing, mainly because he felt this was not his game. ..
The last round with Rohan was an awkward one. They played theory moves throughout the game until it reached a drawing position. Qiuyu could proposed a draw or initiate a 3-way-repetition. But he did not, to him, to draw or to lose is the same. He wanted to make his last effort to see if he can manage a win. Sadly, no.
He was extremely upset after the round. I took him for a long walk, again. This time, to the river.
We met Prince and his dad on the way and we had a good half an our walk to the river. It was such a nice day. The gloriously setting sun calmed everything down, wiping away crankiness, only a sense of peace remained. The wind came softly, taking away all sadness.
If we had to cry over losing games, we might have died of crying.
We must move on, shall we? Pack our stuff, a new journey is starting…
