Aquaprofit - Polgár Chess Day 2010 in Budapest

A short summary about Saturday:

The 4^th Annual Aquaprofit - PolgárChess Day was held this past Saturday. It was a great success as usual, despite the major snow storm that hit Budapest the night before. Around 500 chess fans weathered the snow storm to celebrate the now traditional “Day of Celebration of Chess and its Queens”.

I am impressed by the tremendous interest for chess and this event year after year. There was a huge amount of mainstream media interest (which is not typical for chess) including most major TV stations, before, during and after the actual event. Of course it was great timing for the publicity of the event that Judit just came back a few days earlier from Mexico City with a spectacular victory over Ivanchuk and Topalov to win the UNAM Invitational.

There was one major change from previous years. The Aquaprofit – Polgár Chess Day got extended to a full day event instead of only an afternoon spectacle. Therefore, numerous new colorful activities were added to the program.

Some of them include the two exhibition games Judit and I played in front of the live audience. In the first one, we played while sharing our thoughts by explaining our though-process during our game with the enthusiastic audience in separate rooms (I won that game). The moves were transmitted by cell phones and then we met up to play face to face in the latter part of the game. The second game was a “Trust-Chess” blitz game, (where all the pieces were silver looking, packaged in foil-paper), in which Judit nicely swindled me at the end and balanced the score 1-1.

Sofia gave an hour-long well-attended lecture for beginners, which served also as an introduction to my sisters’ new book: Chess Playground http://polgarchess.com.

The book is aimed to introduce chess to the youngest audience, and is full of chess drawing, rhymes and puzzles. The book, which is already available in Hungarian as well as in English, is being used as the manual in one of the elite Kindergartens in Budapest where chess became part of the curriculum since this Fall. Pre-K students have one hour long chess session weekly, while K, has it twice a week.

The co-authors Sofia and Judit had a book-signing of their first book together. Volume two is already on its way.

The highlight of the event (which also included a press-conference, Q/A, autograph and photo sessions with the fans) was the usual 100 board simul by the three sisters. Among our opponents were numerous celebrities such as Andrea Temesvari, Ivan Fischer, and Marci Eszterhazy, just to mention a few. Also many GMs supported the event with their presence, such as the currently top-ranked Hungarian Zoltan Almasi, chess-legend Pal Benko (82) or the nation’s newest GM and Texas Tech Knight Raider Gergely Antal, etc.

I also went on a chess show, hosted by GM Gabor Kallai, on a major Hungarian Sports TV station (similar to ESPN) in the United States. We discussed the Aquaprofit – Polgár Chess Day, Judit’s spectacular success in Mexico, including her final game victory over Topalov, as well as Texas Tech Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence, the Knight Raiders, and the unprecedented success of the program, etc.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the sponsors and organizers of this wonderful day of “Chess Celebration”, and specifically the main sponsor Aquaprofit and its director Mr. Tamas Nadasi. And of course the initiative of my sister Judit whose brainchild project became a wonderful tradition.

Knight Raider Gergely Antal earns GM title

Gergely Antal (Texas Tech Economics Major), has just earned his final GM norm! He was the first titled player to come to Texas Tech in 2008 and also the first to capture a national chess title for the Knight Raiders. He missed his final GM norm at the 2010 SPICE Spring Invitational by just 1/2 point.

This time, he scored 6.5 points in his final 7 games, including the final round victory against GM Bui Vinh, to tie for 1st and clinch the final GM norm.

Congratulations to GM Antal!

His next tournament will be the SPICE Cup B group in a few weeks.

Rk.		Name	FED	Rtg	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3	Rp	n	w	we	w-we	K	rtg+/-
1	GM	Neelotpal Das	IND	2454	7,0	28,00	0,0	5	2627	9	7	5,07	1,93	10	19,3
2	IM	Banusz Tamas	HUN	2550	7,0	26,50	0,0	5	2616	9	7	6,29	0,71	10	7,1
3	IM	Antal Gergely	HUN	2526	7,0	25,50	0,0	6	2619	9	7	6,00	1,00	10	10,0
4	GM	Czebe Attila	HUN	2479	5,0	19,00	0,0	3	2447	9	5	5,38	-0,38	10	-3,8
5	FM	Natsidis Christoph	GER	2318	4,0	16,50	0,0	1	2379	9	4	3,28	0,72	15	10,8
6	IM	Wittmann Walter	AUT	2303	4,0	14,25	0,0	1	2381	9	4	3,08	0,92	10	9,2
7	GM	Bui Vinh	VIE	2449	4,0	13,75	0,0	2	2364	9	4	5,01	-1,01	10	-10,1
8	FM	Hagen Andreas Skytte	DEN	2311	3,0	11,50	0,0	2	2298	9	3	3,19	-0,19	15	-2,8
9	FM	Lorand Norbert	HUN	2369	2,5	7,50	0,0	1	2250	9	2,5	3,93	-1,43	15	-21,5
10	FM	Kislik Erik Andrew	USA	2357	1,5	5,00	0,0	1	2145	9	1,5	3,77	-2,27	15	-34,0

Special essay by Grandmaster Imre Hera

Special essay by Grandmaster Imre Hera of Hungary

This is from my column in ChessCafe this month
http://www.chesscafe.com/polgar/polgar.htm

People often ask me about what it takes to become a grandmaster and how they differ from a typical chess player. Here is an enlightening essay by Hungarian grandmaster Imre Hera. He is the first GM to receive a scholarship to Texas Tech University, and he hopes to attend in the fall of 2008.

How was a grandmaster born?

Everyone who wants to do something in a professional way knows well that success does not come easy. One has to work hard to achieve his goals and has to give up some of the comforts he is used to. When I was a child, the situation was quite the same and I learned this lesson at an early age.

I started playing chess at the age of 4. First, I learned the basics: the name of the squares, the pieces, the openings and the endings from my father. I was only 6 years old when a friend of our family asked me to give a simultaneous for a group of journalists during an event. Everybody was surprised when I defeated six of the eleven players and drew with three others. A daily newspaper wrote an article about the event and the official Hungarian chess magazine Sakkélet gave a full-page of coverage about me.

These first tastes of success encouraged both me and my father to put more effort into chess. When I turned 7, my father searched for a personal trainer to help develop my skills. As we were not a rich family, we had to save money for the trainer’s wage. Therefore, we did not buy as much clothes, toys, or accessories as other families did. First I was going to school in the mornings and had chess lessons in the afternoons. But as I developed more in chess, I needed more and more training sessions. My parents decided to put me in a ‘private pupil’ status, so that I had more time for chess. This meant having exams in Math and other subjects during the summer when other children were on their vacation.

My very first adult Hungarian team championship came in 1996. My debut couldn’t be better: I won the championship. Everybody who has achieved an aim for what he had worked for many years knows it well – that sweet taste of victory. And when one has tasted it for the first time, he wants it again. That success – still at the age of 10 – made me even more determined to become a better player.

My second big challenge was the 1996 world championship finals at Menorca. It was my second time traveling abroad. Traveling through Barcelona was a huge experience for me. My whole family supported me all the way – my mother accompanied me to Spain. In the end, I finished fifth in the tournament. Many of the competitors who appeared there already had their master or grandmaster titles by then.

After Spain things sped up: I was signed by a club participating in the Hungarian First Division - Matador – and was immediately given the third place in rank. In that same year I was invited to the ‘98 Rapid World Championship Finals in France. In the end, I won the world championship, which is one of the most favorite memories of my life so far. This can be better understood if one imagines that he is in EuroDisney – one of the children’s favorite places in Europe for free and finishes a competition with a perfect of 8 points out of 8 games. I was even interviewed by the Chinese National Television. When I finally got home, I was on the front page of the national sport newspaper and several other newspapers. For a while I felt like a star. In those days I also learned a lot about how to deal with success and how to put behind achievement when I had to go forward.

Though it seemed that success followed success in my life, there were always lows to bring me back to reality. Meanwhile I had graduated from primary school and started my secondary school in which they did not allow me to continue my studies as a private student. For that I had to focus less on chess for a long time. Little successes – like participating in the secondary school’s team – cheered me up during that time. Our school won the first place in the national “student Olympic” championship twice. For the second championship I requested from our trainer to share my knowledge with my teammates in order to help them develop into better players. I was also invited to other schools to give simultaneous exhibitions, but I did not take part any active tournaments. I just played team games.

School was not the only problem during those days. Two other shocking events happened to me: my parents divorced and our club went bankrupt – which of course meant that we had to give up participating in the First Division. I had to look for a new club for the first time in four years. Fortunately, my father not only taught me how to face success but failures as well, so I could get back on my feet.

Three years passed with practicing and I continued my path of collecting new championships. I won the European Rapid Championship trophy in Graz 2000. After secondary school, I decided to return to chess. I wanted to be an IM, as I had one norm before at the age of 11. I reached the international master level unexpectedly quickly in two months in 2005, which opened the gates for me to foreign championships. I got signed by a Polish, a Slovakian and a new Hungarian club. I had my first league victory with my Slovakian team (Komarno) in 2006 and in 2007 we repeated the victory.

My biggest challenge was to become an international grandmaster, which I reached at the 2007 European Individual Championship in Dresden. I even received an invitation to the final 128 in the World Cup in Khanty Mansysk, Russia. I saw some of the top players in the world there and had to fight against grandmaster Rublevsky. Unfortunately, he was a too big of a ‘fish’ for me to defeat.

Now, in the 14th year of my professional chess career, I have almost attained all that I wanted. I have signed with several clubs, earned the grandmaster title and several titles as well. But I am still far away from being number one in my sport and I still have plenty to learn. I saw many players who got stuck in development at my level. This happened because of laziness in some cases, while with some others it was because they could not set up new challenges for themselves. I do not want to lay back in my armchair because I feel that I can reach whatever I want in chess.

On the way home from Russia I was wondering on the plane whether all these efforts were worth it all. I have to say: totally. I have learned a lot about how to appear, how to communicate and how to behave among foreign people. I even learned how to live on my own – for a week or more – in a foreign country and be away from my family. Sometimes I feel like I should regret the many things that I gave up for practicing chess when I was a child, but the success that I have achieved has compensated that feeling.

With my short autobiography I wanted to show that one can achieve success (or even more) that one has dreamed of, but only if he works hard and brings his best to the game. That is the only way to become a ‘grandmaster’ in any aspect of life.

This was in my ChessCafe column this month. Click here to read my column this month.