Daily Message from Coach West - Thankful Thursday & Tournament Updates

Good Morning Friends,

Coach West here, and it's Thankful Thursday! We had a nice response to our call for stories, and it is apparent that we are very fortunate to be connected to our community of chess players and families. I would like to share one excellent story with you, but first, we wanted to clarify a little about the nature of some of the ChessKid technical issues some have experienced.

Here's what we received from ChessKid in regards to the recent issues:

"We've been compiling a list of reports for our tech team to sort through one-by-one. I wanted to let you know there was an update that was just released to the Fast Chess system about 2 hours ago (on Wed 4/22/20). I sincerely hope it helps to resolve some of the issues that coaches and players have been experiencing!

If you ever experience a situation where the system didn't register your last move (and switch the clock's time to your opponent), a browser refresh should solve it (the little circular arrow icon near your url address field). However - even better, my tech team has told me that today's update specifically addresses this issue, so I hope it makes for smoother play in the future - "

We do suggest you all clear your web browsers cache before joining the tournaments - Please see how here:  https://www.chesskid.com/article/view/how-to-clear-your-browsers-cache

Hopefully this will resolve issues going forward. Also, please feel free to directly reach out to our ChessKid support team for more immediate help, by including your ChessKid username and any relevant screen shots of technical issues.

ICN ChessKid Support Team: icnchesskid@gmail.com

Our priority is providing you the best tournament playing experience and we are constantly working to achieve this.

Thanks for your patience and see everyone tomorrow,

Coach West

My Story, by Jonas Flores-Zeledon

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My name is Jonas. Chess came into my life when my older sister Dana started playing, I was in 1st grade and I wanted to do what she did, and my parents enrolled me in the PS 139 club.

At the beginning I didn't understand much, and my sister would always beat me, and would I never want to go to any chess tournaments. A lot of times I wanted to quit chess club, but my parent’s always told me that, If I start something, I have to finish it.

I was always a shy kid, with few friends and I didn’t talk to much, I was scarred to make mistakes.

PS.139 was always a very strong team for me. I saw how my sister won many tournaments and I wanted to be as a strong chess player like her, so I started playing in tournaments and I started being happy once I started bring medals and trophies to my house. My coach Ian West always gave us courage to make puzzles to prepare for tournaments, I remember one time, I made 1000 puzzles in one week because I wanted first place.

This experience helped me to be confident. Nowadays in life I didn’t change much but now I can say hi to good players from other schools and I don’t feel scared from them but I want to share something important that you can make a lot of mistakes trying to be first place and I finally understand that you have to enjoy chess and play with your heart always trying to do what your coach teaches you. I have to say thank you to coach Matheu, because he would always give me a good word when I lose or when I win, I consider him a real friend.

This is my story.

Jonas-Flores

Congratulations to Jonas for breaking 1400 in our NEW Rating System and becoming a TWO-STAR General on the Ninja Hall of Fame board!! We look forward to adding your star in the near future!

Well done!

ICN Online Community: Things to Note

Program Advice:

  • If you are an advanced player - 700 + USCF: DO EVERYTHING (Puzzles, videos, tournaments, lessons, live streams, books, exercises, chess, chess, chess) * We will be including interactive group classes on Zoom shortly.

  • If you are an intermediate player - 300 + USCF: DO EVERYTHING (Puzzles, videos, tournaments, lessons, live streams, books, exercises, chess, chess, chess) * We will be including interactive group classes on Zoom shortly.

  • If you are New To Chess:

* Focus on the Learn section on chesskid.com

  1. Lessons on chesskid.com. Start with Lesson One (Pawn 1) and continue all the way through (as many as are appropriate for your desired speed of advancement)

  2. Supplement with Videos on chesskid.com. Start by watching each Beginner Video (as many as are appropriate for your desired speed of advancement)

  3. As your knowledge base grows from Lessons and Videos, keep trying to work on solving Puzzles (this should happen in tandem)

  4. Once Puzzles begin to click...You should begin to test your skills on Play vs Kid on chesskid.com (time control 15 minutes)

Daily Online Schedule: 

  • 9:00 AM - Daily Opening Email

  • Content, puzzle contests, self study, private coaching

  • 11:30 AM, 5-round, G10, d5 - ICN Rapid Open will include all players across the ICN networks

  • 3:30 PM - Daily Coaches Meeting Uploaded on Youtube - Watch Here

  • 4:00 PM, 3 rounds G25, d5 - same format as our ICN monthly tournaments w/ U300, U700, U1000 & Open sections

  • Content, puzzle contests, self study, private coaching

Individual Winners (Top 10):

Rapid Open

  • Ashwin Bear (Trinity)

  • Caitlin Adams (139)

  • Kevin Xie (10)

  • Jude Badawi (33)

  • Anthony Cortese (111)

  • Adam Abdelgawad (BIB)

  • Marisa Pacelli (33)

  • Clark Shlisky (77)

  • Aayush Chokshi (11)

  • Miles Stringer (33)

1000 +

  • Caitlin Liao (41)

  • Amitai Sebba (BCD)

  • Conner Liao (41)

  • Nathan Peyton (41)

  • Josh Price (Home)

  • Akaash Rau (116)

  • Errol Lipton (TD)

  • Rohail Shah (PS40)

  • Indira Raparthi (11)

  • Hunter Quirk (10)

U1000

  • Mila Antonios (10)

  • Wesley T Huang (33)

  • Max Stark (33)

  • Luke Gorga (10)

  • Jeremy K. Yoon (10)

  • Devin Wang (77)

  • Jose Rondeau (77)

  • Royal Puritz (Miami Country)

  • James Chan (33)

  • Avin Pawar (33)

U700

  • Anthony Cortese(111)

  • Theodore Han (77)

  • Aden B Huang (33)

  • Arjun Bhatnagar (10)

  • Aaron Albin-Lacke (130K)

  • Patrick Mulvihill (33)

  • Kai Hei Wong (33)

  • Roger Pan (BIM)

  • Arlo Schnee (33)

  • Caleb Jaffe (230)

U300

  • Bennett Sabino (33)

  • Sahil Sabharwal (77)

  • Nathaniel Son (10)

  • Shaleen Sabharwal (77)

Daily Stats and Standings:

Finally, join me in congratulating all the winners from our daily events:

Our daily winners will be on display here.

Additionally, please see here for our updated day standings of our Puzzles contest.

Team Winners:

Rapid Open

  • PS 33, 6 points

  • Trinity, 5 points

  • PS 139, 4 points

  • PS 10, 3 points

1000 +

  • PS 41, 7.5 points

  • PS 11, 5 points

  • PS 77, 3.5 points

  • BCD, 2.5 points

U1000

  • PS 10, 8.5 points

  • PS 33, 8 points

  • PS 77, 4 points

  • Miami Country, 2 points

U700

  • PS 33, 9 points

  • PS 10, 7 points

  • PS 77, 6 points

  • PS 111, 5 points

U300

  • PS 77, 3 points

  • PS 33, 2.5 points

  • PS 10, 1 point

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ICN Puzzle Competition:

  • PS 33's Team leads with a total of 9,583 puzzles completed (Top 10)

  • PS 33's Team leads with a total of 17,347 puzzles completed (All Time)

  • PS 33's Nik Vig is leading the charts with 1227 puzzles completed in the last 7 days.

  • PS 33's Nik Vig is leading the charts with 333 puzzles completed in one day.

  • A special congratulations to PS 59's Jude Kazan for having the highest chesskid rating in the last 7 days of 2719.

We are happy to announce online streamed videos, with live commentary, and skill appropriate lesson content is available on our youtube channel.

Congratulations and keep up the great job,

Nashali Paulino