Craig and William Victorious

The Saturday Night Chess Club saw a total of a dozen participants in two sections. The nights clear winners were Craig and William, both taking a home a trophy.

Craig coasted through competition for the first few rounds til his last game against Adrian. "It was the hardest game of the tournament", says Craig, "and when he forked my King and Queen, I wanted to resign." But with the fighting spirit still strong in him, he held in there. It came down to an endgame that Craig describes as "exciting". In a time scramble, Adrian had given back the won material and the game resulted in a draw.

Craig's other interest include soccer and algebra. He has a determined focus and wants to improve his rating by attending such entertaining training experiences as Joe Hanley's Chess Camps...one of his favorite chess experiences ever.

William, who won his section, also aspires to improve his rating to 1200 by this December. He also enjoys attending Hanley's Chess Camps, and remembers the other fun activities during the experience, such as swimming with his brothers.

HCA/So. Pas Scholastic #5 - Advanced Entries

Thursday is our next Roundtable Pizza Scholastic tournament. Here are the advanced entries list along with their ratings.

Name and USCF Rating

1 Justin Liu 1028
2 Joaquin Perkins 949
3 Blake Powell 928
4 Daniel Holmes 726
5 Christopher Jung 654
6 Jonathan Thein 561
7 Thomas Sawano 308
8 Timothy Okitsu 239

Las Vegas Scholastics

There were two scholastic tournaments this past weekend in Las Vegas as part of the National Open. We had about 10 students there for both tournaments. They all had a good time with the swimming, bowling and chess.

Tony Kukavica and Projit both finished in 8th place in their divisions (Boys Under 11 and Boys Under 14. We also finished in second place team in the Boys Under 14. Matthew is above and was part of our Boys Under 14 team. Here were the standings from this:

We are all looking forward to returning next year for the next tournament.

Matthew Harris

One student of mine who had much learning to do (Don't we all? :) ) is Matthew Harris. I started working with him about a year ago. He struggled like crazy to understand all of the concepts I was trying to teach him. However, he never gave up. I am a firm believer that in life, we never fail...we only give up trying. Anyways, he bought into this and worked very hard understanding everything I was teaching him. He had many struggles in learning and stayed at rating levels for awhile. However, he would never give up and his parents would not let him either....all to their credit.

I am now happy to say that Matthew has just passed the 1100 USCF mark (actually 1137) and is continuing to improve. I want to make notice of him here because in June, he is moving to North Carolina (the place where his parents grew up) and I will not be seeing him much anymore...and he will be highly missed by everyone here at HCA...as we all came to know him and like him...in fact, I have never heard one negative thing about Matthew from any of his friends here or competitors (he actually exhibits the best sportsmanship of anyone I have ever seen at his age, including myself. I want to congratulate him on everything he has accomplished here. Oh, by the way, Matthew was born with a learning disability and has even overcome much of that!

Memorial Weekend Chess Camp

This weekend we had our Memorial Day Chess Camp. It is a strong showing with the following players taking part:

Tony Kukavica
Mitchell Wang
Christopher Lopez
Chance Paxton
Shawn Jackson
Jessica Lopez
Devon Henderson

We are working very hard on many facets of the game...to the point where the students are feeling pushed to expand their knowledge. As in everything (weightlifting for example), when doing something new, it feels uncomfortable at first because we are not used to the workload. However, in sticking to it, we begin to be able to handle that amount and then are able to expand further...it is a never ending process. As a great friend and teacher of mine once told me, "Joe, we are in life school where the learning never stops...however, the growing and improvement never stop either." Kids who are able to grasp this are the ones who continue to improve day after day.

Weekend Tournaments

This weekend is our HCA #27 on Sunday. Here is the link with all the information.

http://hanleychessacademy.org/HCA%2027.html

We also have our Saturday Night Chess Club from 5pm-9pm. We hope to see you here.

Spring Break Camp & S. Pasadena Tournament

This week we have 6 students attending our Spring Break Camp. We are spending a lot of time on tactical studies as well as playing USCF rated games. Each day, there is also pizza as it seems as pizza is a favorite of not only myself.

Next, Thursday Night at Roundtable Pizza in So. Pasadena is our second tournament. Last month, we had a successful 34 students attending. This was a great turnout. The players are playing 3 games in the Quad format. If you would like to join either of these events, you are welcome to join.