Friendship

At WYCC many players take the opportunity to develop friendship with children representing other countries. Today, four Canadian girls befriended a Chinese player who’s learning English in order to talk to the arbiters in international tournament. The Chinese girl goes to a renowned chess school where Hou Yifan, the reigning woman’s world champion, started her chess career. Unsurprisingly she tied for second after six rounds in the U10G section. Like our Canadian girls, she doesn’t want to be a professional chess player.

While the parents were discussing the possibility of chess/language camps in Canada/China, the girls had lots of fun together. They shared chess stories and taught each other chess terminology in Chinese and English. The Chinese girl also told the Canadian girls some nutrition secret before chess games. For example, she said she usually ate food X before playing a Russian and Y before playing a Pole. Unfortunately for her, there wasn’t enough food X and Y at hand, so she yielded half a point each to a Russian girl and a Polish girl. Here I omit the details of the particular food out of respect for her intellectual property. However, I expect her to reveal it in the near future, considering Hou Yifan has let out the ingredients of her “magic” potion recently.

To make the day perfect for us, Luke (U8 Open) jumped around and told the girls that he won (He tied for second place). Our girls shouted “it’s a great day for Canada.” They all won their games too.