Chess Parents FAQs - Blog

How scary is chess in New York City? part 6 - ICN

1/2/2023

The first time I heard about ICN was because someone went to the Marshall Chess Club to take classes and said it was organized by ICN. The photo of the last national tournament was mixed-up, and someone pointed out that it was a photo of ICN. I always thought ICN was Impact Chess Network. After checking online, I found out that it is Impact Coaching Network. It has only appeared on the stage in New York City in recent years, or it may have been renamed from another institution. But the cooperation with Marshall really made it famous.

After checking the website, ICN mainly cooperates with schools to organize after school chess classes or chess clubs. There are already 27 schools under its banner, most of which are public schools of the PS series. PS 33 (aka Chelsea Prep) (photo) is probably the most famous one. With such a huge scale, there must be a coaching team. But because it is not directly under a school, the coaches are not necessarily the strongest, and the student stars among them are not the strongest. But it has a lot of activities. In addition to after school, and Marshall's class, there are also monthly training camps, and several tournaments every weekend. This has built a good mass base for the popularization of chess.

ICN will definitely continue to expand, and maybe one day it will be bought by Play Magnus like Silver Knight (DC, an after school institution in the Pennsylvania area). This is a little prophecy of mine.

How scary is chess in New York City? part 5 - Tani phenomenon

12/29/2022

A piece of news today disrupted my plan for the series. But at least it is related to the chess in New York.

The three children mentioned in the movie "Brooklyn Castle" yesterday, Rochelle, Justus, and James, are all black children. In addition, Darrian in the comments, and Joshua Colas, one of the three musketeers (3 Js) at the time. Nowhere else do you see so many black kids who are good at chess. The latest example is Tani.

Tani fled from Nigeria as a refugee in 2017, and today's news is that the Tani family's asylum application was approved. When the family first arrived here, they lived in a shelter for the homeless. Tani went to PS116. This school is now under the management of ICN, but telling from the team T-shirts at the time, it was ChessNYC, another famous institution.

Tani joined the school's Chess Club and worked very hard. It is common for him to do 500 tactical problems a week. After hard work, his rating improved rapidly. He learned chess in 2018 and won the K-3 championship in New York State in 2019, becoming famous in one fell swoop. In 2021, when he was 10 years old, he achieved national master. Now that he has obtained three IM norms, only need a SuperSwiss norm to become an IM.

Pictured above is Tani's autobiography. A very inspiring story. It seems that someone has already reserved the film rights.

That quote from yesterday, "If you work hard enough, you will succeed!"

How scary is chess in New York City? part 4

12/27/2022

Yesterday I talked about the highly competitive nature of New York City. Let me take it easy today and introduce a movie. But after reading it, it will also make you feel excited, eager to try.

"Brooklyn Castle" is a documentary released in 2012. From April 2009 to June 2010, the film crew followed the New York PS318 chess team, filming daily training, study and life, and going to various places to compete. It took more than a year to shoot. Among them, the hardships of life, the hard work of studies, the pressure of entering a higher school, in front of the charm of chess, everything is calm and breezy.

PS318 is a public school for underprivileged students (PS = Public School). To go to a national tournament, teachers and students need to organize fundraising activities together to have enough funds. Parents are often unable to accompany them. The teacher leads the team, and several students share a room. If it is close, take the school bus and go out, all in order to save money. Difficult conditions did not affect their performance. It can be said that their performance at th the national championship is not ideal. They don't seem to be fully recovered from the pandemic, but some have reported seeing their coach on the field. Their results in this national tournament are the fourth in the two teams of grade 7 and grade 8.

The protagonists of the film have all grown up, Rochelle Ballantyne went to the University of Chicago, Justus Williams went to Webster, already IM, and James Black, Jr. unknown.

Introduction in Baidu Encyclopedia:

"No. 318 Junior High School in New York - Chess Movement Through the introduction of chess, PS318 Middle School became famous and now it has the best junior high school chess team in the United States. Chess not only keeps the students of PS318 Middle School away from violence, drug abuse and crime in society and other phenomena, but also cultivated the children's learning ability and improved their academic performance, so that many of them stood out, won scholarships, and entered high school and university. Chess has become the campus culture of 318 Middle School. The school's philosophy is There is no natural talent in chess, no need to have innate talent, "If you work really hard you can be successful"."

Amazon Prime has the movie available.

How scary is chess in New York City? part 3

12/25/2022

Entering the core content today, I hope you will gain at least one thing after reading this article.

New York City's chess is strong for three reasons:

1. Most of the head coaches hired by the schools are GMs, and the coaching teams are very strong. Let's talk about each school in the future.

2. The school has clubs and teams, and there are regular activities every week, several times a week. This kind of atmosphere forces you have to make progress with everyone.

3. This is the most critical point, and it cannot be replicated elsewhere. Take a look at the picture above, this is a screenshot I took yesterday to see how many tournaments there are in each weekend, the first week is 3+6, the second week has the national, there is still 3+2, and the third week is 3+ 5. In the fourth week, the school began to have winter vacation. So on a typical weekend, New York City can find 8-9 games, which is enough exercise for USCF below 1500. And that doesn't include The Right Move's weekly tournaments, and the famous Marshall Chess Club's almost daily tournaments.

Where would such conditions exist? I moved from Ohio to New Jersey because Ohio couldn't find two or three tournaments a month, let alone every week. New Jersey is slightly better, with at least 2-3 tournaments per week, but the distribution is very wide. Basically, you need one hour driving.

Weekly tournament is the conclusion of my initial research. Will talk about it later. 90% of the parents say that I can't do it, but if we want our children to be successful, we have to try our best to get closer.

To find the image above, or to find a tournament in New York City, search luckfactory chess (add chess to all searches if you can't find anything initially).

The Right Move, just search for the name.

Marshall can search their website, or go to uschess to search.

In the future, we will look at famous institutions and schools in New York one by one. I'm not advertising for them. Research is part of my job as a teacher. I don't know how the market can do a good job in recruiting students, although New York is not my main battlefield at all. Sharing is also one of my purposes for writing this blog. If I wrote something wrong, please point it out in time, either in the comments or private message me.

How scary is chess in New York City? part 2

12/23/2022

Look at the results of this year's grade competition in New York, (All the first places, I removed the non-New York ones):

Kindergarten: WU, Darren, NY (five ties）（Photo）
Team:

1st Grade:
Team: The Speyer Legacy School, New York, NY

2nd Grade: SHEN, Alice, NY
Team:

3rd Grade:
Team: The Speyer Legacy School, NY

4th Grade:
Team: The Speyer Legacy School, NY

5th Grade:
Team: Hunter College Campus School, New York, NY; P.S. 10, Brooklyn, NY

6th Grade:
Team:

7th Grade:
Team: Hunter College Campus School, New York, NY

8th Grade: HARDAWAY, Brewington, NY
Team: Success Academy Hudson Yards, New York, NY

9th Grade:
Team: Stuyvesant HS, New York, NY (tie）

10th Grade: FM CHASIN, Nico Werner, NY (tie）
Team: Columbia Grammar & Prep, New York, NY (tie）

11th Grade:
Team: Dalton, New York, NY

12th Grade:
Team: Columbia Grammar & Prep, New York, NY (tie）

If you look at the top five, the ratio is even bigger. Take the sixth grade in which New York didn't take any first place as an example. The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th places of the group are all from New York. It can be seen that New York not only has a large number of chess players, but also has a lot of strength.

Tomorrow we will talk about why New York is so strong.

How scary is chess in New York City? part 1

12/22/2022

After posting the photos yesterday, many parents pointed out my mistake. The photos belong to all the schools in ICN, not PS 33. As for what organization ICN is, we will introduce it later. Another parent provided me with today's photo, a group photo of Success Academy after awarding out awards. Both will be included here, ICN and Success Academy.

Looking at the data, there are a total of 2481 people/times in this tournaments (because there are a few people signing up for side events, I will omit "times" below), and there are 939 people in New York State, most of them are from New York City. It takes about 5-6 hours from New York City to the gayload resort, and many schools come here by chartered buses.

75 Dalton
67 Hunter College Campus School
35 PS 33 Chelsea Prep
34 Speyer Legacy School, The
32 PS 77 - Lower Lab School
30 Anderson School
26 Columbia Grammar & Prep
26 Avenues: The World School
25 NEST+m School

Success Academy 系列

25 Success Academy Hudson Yards
24 Success Academy Midtown West
12 Success Academy Union Square
9 Success Academy HS Liberal Art
6 Success Academy Rosedale
3 Success Academy Williamsburg
2 Success Academy Hells Kitchen
2 Success Academy Charter School Union Square
2 Success Academy Bed-Stuy Middle School
1 SUCCESS ACADEMY HIGH SCHOOL
1 Success Academy Harlem West
1 Success Academy Myrtle MS
1 Success Academy East Flatbush Middle School

What is Skittle Room?

12/13/2022

Skittle is the small sticks or small bottles of the bowling ball game.

All major US tournaments have a Skittle Room, like the one pictured above. This is the Skittle Room for this national tournament.

This is a place for chess players and parents to rest. Many chess players review games here and eat here. They will social with their friends here, and what often seen is playing bughouse together.

What kind of organization is the US Chess Federation?

12/8/2022

United States Chess Federation, referred to as USCF or USChess.

The United States has no sports commission, no chess and card management center, and basically all sports events are privately run. Similarly, the United States Chess Federation is also run by the people and organized spontaneously by the people. So it's not a state agency, and there's no government funding. Like most private organizations focusing on a special activity, it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

A common feature of non-profit organizations is "no money" (there are also rich ones). Its main sources of income are: 1. Donations 2. Membership fees 3. Tournament game rating fees 4. Registration fees for organizing scholastic tournaments.

The picture above is the headquarter of the US Chess Federation in rural Tennessee. There may be a dozen offices (and storage rooms). I have never been the headquarter, and I believe 99% of chess players have never been there. There may not be 10 people who are usually working in the office. In January of this year (2022), it is said that the board of directors of the Chess Federation decided to move the family to St. Louis, to be closer to the St. Louis Chess Club. After all, it is now the capital of chess.

Just such a non-governmental organization, all American games use its rules and rating system. It is also the only chess federation accredited by FIDE to represent the United States. (There are many such non-governmental organizations in the United States. If you want to set up one yourself, no one can stop you. The most famous and still operating one is the Northwest Chess Federation. I will talk about it later when I have time.)

The Chess Federation formulates the rules, and the actual implementation depends on the affiliated organizations (including the State Chess Associations, Chess Clubs, Chess Schools) and TDs. All of these are not administrative agencies and have no direct subordinate relationship.

What national tournaments are there in the US?

12/7/2022

According to the latest USCF document, https://new.uschess.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/us-chess-scholastic-regulations-2022-2023a_8-6-2022.pdf, the United States still has at least The following games:

SuperNationals: Once every four years (the following three spring tournaments combined, can be as many as 5,000 people)

Spring Nationals: There are three tournaments in elementary school, middle school and high school.

The K-12 Grade National Championship (this weekend's tournament) has already had a record-breaking attendance of over 2,300 this year.

Online National Scholastic Quick Championships: I don’t know if the tournament after the epidemic will continue in the future

National Youth Action Championships: not popular

Junior Chess Congress: not popular

U.S. Junior Open: The only bright spot, the winner can participate in the US Junior Closed, the top invitational tournament for students.

All-Girls Nationals: It's KCF in the spring, in Chicago. The number of participants is 300-400.

These are all tournaments that are fully open to elementary and middle school students studying in the United States.

Why do you need a team to participate in the national tournament?

12/6/2022

Why do you need a team to participate in the national tournament? Or why having a team is good for children's growth?

The first, of course, is that having a team is more likely to win trophies. Personally, if you want to get a trophy, you can only lose one or two points at most in the 7 rounds, which is very difficult. The team is different, because it counts the results of the top three in your grade in your school. Even if your own performance is not satisfactory, as long as three people in your team perform well, you may win the trophy. And not every school has teams, so the competition is much smaller. A section of more than 200 people may only have 20 or so teams. The probability of winning is greatly increased.

The second is the sense of honor of the team. You fight for the team, not just for yourself. Individuals can give up at any time, and come back next time, but for the team you have to try harder, maybe one more time or one more minute. There are so many eyes on you, so many people looking forward to your victory.

Third, teammates support and encourage each other. Teammates will not be matched according to rule, so everyone will do their best to help their teammates prepare and win. This is completely different from the general individual tournament, and it is another kind of atmosphere.

My daughter had been eager to have a team since she was young, but it was not until the 12th grade of high school that she led the chess club, and had the opportunity to lead the team to participate in the High School National Championship tournament in spring. She caught the last chance and her team won the 11th place.