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I recently competed in the U.S. Championship from May 3-12. It was held at the St. Louis Chess Club which as usual provided excellent conditions. Congrats to Gata Kamsky for winning; Alejandro Ramirez for tying for 1st in the classical games; Kayd... | Read More
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I played for the University of Texas at Dallas at the President's Cup, or Final Four of Chess. The qualifiers were the 4 US teams who finished highest at the Pan-American Intercollegiate tourament. Teams can have up to 6 players, four of whom play... | Read More
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The University of Texas at Dallas chess program has one training tournament in each semester. Usually it has been a round robin, but this time it was an open tournament, held on March 9-13. Thirteen Grandmasters were playing. In rounds 1 and 2 I w... | Read More
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On February 15-17 I played at a 5-round tournament called the Texas Masters, which was held at the Dallas Chess club.
I tied for first with 3 other players: GM Cristian Chirila (against whom I won in round 3), IM Darwin Yang (drew in round 4), ... | Read More
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Sometimes, when you are trying to checkmate the opposing king, you find that all your queens, bishops, knights, rooks, and pawns aren't enough. Therefore, the king must be enlisted to increase the pressure. In my database I encountered an enterta... | Read More
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On December 27-30 I played in the Pan-American Intercollegiate Chess Championship. I was on the University of Texas at Dallas A team. In each round we played a 4-board match against a team from some other university, or in the case of round 5, o... | Read More
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Oftentimes chessplayers will feel that they hit a wall in their chess development, or simply want to improve faster. So a question that many like to ask to grandmasters is, "What do you do to get better at chess?" There is no secret ingredient for... | Read More
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This year is my second year playing for the Dallas Destiny team in the US Chess League. It is an online league where the games are played at chess.com this year, or at least the ones I've been involved in so far are. Currently we are first place i... | Read More
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The last 5 rounds of the World Junior did not go well for me. I did manage to win against Mark Lapidus, who was rated only 2129, in round 9. But after that I couldn't win any more games. In round 10 I lost with white to GM Alexander Ipatov represe... | Read More
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I'm representing the US right now at the World Junior (under 20) Championship in Athens. I have 6/8 so far and there are still 5 rounds to go. Today was the first day that I played against a Grandmaster; in previous rounds I always played a lower-... | Read More