Zhou Lily tie for 3rd at Panamerican Youth!

[Andrei Botez]

Congratulation Lily, great result! Also congratulation for her parents, family and Windsor chess comunity!

[John Coleman]

Re: Zhou Lily tie for 3rd at Panamerican Youth!

Lily scored +6 = 1 -2, for a performance rating of 1380 (in a section where most participants were not FIDE rated). Lily's CFC rating was 1076 before CYCC, where she scored 6/7. CYCC has not yet been rated.

Of the two losses, in round 2 Lily was unable to find an English-speaking arbiter - I'm not sure what effect that had on her game. In round 4, she blundered into mate, while a rook up.

[Christopher Mallon]

Re: Zhou Lily tie for 3rd at Panamerican Youth!

Of the two losses, in round 2 Lily was unable to find an English-speaking arbiter - I'm not sure what effect that had on her game.

This is just a little bit ridiculous, IMHO... you have to be able to converse in English to get the IA title (and in the past you needed it for the FA as well).

Not to mention... it's spoken by more than a third of the population in the Americas, and is the official language in a large number of the countries represented there...

Yet another reason why we should be pushing to split the Americas in FIDE, in my opinion.

[Eric Hansen]

Re: Zhou Lily tie for 3rd at Panamerican Youth!

This is just a little bit ridiculous, IMHO... you have to be able to converse in English to get the IA title (and in the past you needed it for the FA as well).

in the meantime the CFC could hire me as the Pan-Am coach with my Spanish :D

[Zeljko Kitich]

Re: Zhou Lily tie for 3rd at Panamerican Youth!

This is just a little bit ridiculous, IMHO... you have to be able to converse in English to get the IA title (and in the past you needed it for the FA as well).

Not to mention... it's spoken by more than a third of the population in the Americas, and is the official language in a large number of the countries represented there...

Yet another reason why we should be pushing to split the Americas in FIDE, in my opinion.

Spoken like a true Amer... err Canadian :D

[George Zhou]

Re: Zhou Lily tie for 3rd at Panamerican Youth!

Congratulation Lily, great result! Also congratulation for her parents, family and Windsor chess comunity!

Thank you very much Andrei and John for letting me know by email about the English speaking arbiter Russel Smith, I found him and talked to him after round 4, mentioned about the language issues, after that, Lily felt less nervous and actually won 4.5 out of 5, not necessary this is the direct reason, but definately helped. it was not comfortable being surrounded by only spanish speaking opponent and arbiters while opponent stopped clock herself by pointing the chessboard, talking to arbiter and you don't understand it. actually it turned out that opponent likes to copy scoresheet and go to washroom by stopping clock.

Also thanks to all Lily's coaches and windsor chess community teachers, I am sorry Lily didn't do better, hope she could work harder.

BTW, the organizer didn't organize this tournament well, first round started 1.5 hours later than schedule, started at 6:35pm and when kids finished and back to hotel, it was very late, and the next round bus pick up at 8:30am.

the organizer charged every one player and accompanying person each USD 90$ for picking up from airport and drop off to airport, a few players family has to stay in airport when coming, most people have to take taxi when departure to airport.

We(all 3 Ontario players and family and 1 american player) took the van to airport thought it was from organizer,however it turned out that was a taxi called by hotel, the driver held me for paying the taxi even I tried to explain but language is the problem.

We found that the organizer treated americans more nicer than everyone else, not sure if the americans are the only team got transportation from organizer, though all paid the transportation fee.

[Hal Bond]

Re: Zhou Lily tie for 3rd at Panamerican Youth!

Thanks for this report George. I will be seeing Russell in Istanbul later this month and I will discuss the good and the bad with him.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Zhou Lily tie for 3rd at Panamerican Youth!

Also thanks to all Lily's coaches and windsor chess community teachers, I am sorry Lily didn't do better, hope she could work harder.

It seems to me that Lily works very hard most of the time. We are all proud of her and the work she has done to improve her game. She is an inspiration and an example to many of the other kids of what is possible with a little bit more work on their part. We look forward to having her back among us.