Yes Ma'am, Girls PWN in Cal and Mexico!

Team USA winners. L to R: Pranav, Chenyi, Joaquin Perkins, Aksithi and Ashritha.

The recent Chess Life Online video "Women Talk Chess: Beating the Boys" has stirred emotions on both sides of the gender gap in chess.  The cold hard facts reveal that only 3% of adult players are women.  On the bright side, many young girls join their elementary school clubs, and often they outperform the boys.

CalChess Girls Champion Sophia Li

The Bay Area girls are no exception.  A dozen kids now populate the Girls U-13 and U-16 rankings on the CalChess Top 100 lists, more than double from just two years ago.  Many attended the CalChess Girls Championship in January, with Sophia Li earning a hard fought victory in the top section.  As these young women grow older, may they continue to inspire the next bunch a few years younger. 

Indeed, three local girls won medals for their age at the North American Youth Chess Championships last weekend in Mexico City!  Kudos to Ashritha Eswaran (silver in Girls-U12), her sister Aksithi Eswaran (bronze in Girls-U8) and Chenyi Zhao (silver in Girls-U10).  Actually, the girls didn't take everything--here's a big cheer for Pranav Senthilkumar for earning the gold medal in Boys-U10!

Closer to home, the girls scored a collective hat trick at the Best of the West Championship on Memorial Day weekend.  Out of six sections in this adult tournament, half ended with a middle school age lady on top!  Congratulations to Audrey Zhao (Class B), reigning state girls champion Sophia Li (Class C) and Emily Zhu (U1400 section) for capturing clear first place, each a half point ahead of the boys!

Go Girls!!!

I'm baaaaaaaack

Many of my readers have wondered what happened to this blog. Five weeks have passed since my last post. Did I give up blogging? Did I quit chess? Is something else seriously wrong?

Fortunately, I can assure everyone that rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. Yes, I was sick for a while with nagging cold/flu symptoms. I also felt sad and burned out and wanted a little time simply to "chill" and recharge my mental batteries.

As the recent photo by Richard Shorman of ChessDryad at left proves, my enthusiasm for chess has not waned. I maintain a busy weekly teaching schedule with only occasional interruptions. Despite heavy rain on President's Day weekend, I joined 11 students and about 90 other chess enthusiasts at the People's Tournament in Berkeley. IM David Pruess beat me and won the Open section ahead of five other masters. Kudos to National 5th Grade Champion Kyle Shin for winning the U2200 section and to Saratoga High School senior Jeff Young for finally earning the rank of Expert! During February and March, I also participate in the annual Sacramento Chess Club Team Championship; unfortunately, neither my team (Elk Grove) nor I have played terribly well so far.

In other CalChess news, Samyukta Bhat (see photo at right) scored an undefeated 4.0/5 to take clear first for K-12 at the CalChess Girl's Championship, thereby earning our state's qualifying spot in this year's Susan Polgar National Invitational for Girls in Lubbock, Texas on July 26-31. Rebekah Liu plans to attend the same invitational after winning the high school section of the Susan Polgar National Open in Glendale, AZ. Goooo girls!

I will try to catch up with some stories over the next week. Please check back soon!