Awonder-ful
Experience in New York
by Awonder
A lot of People
New York is, and always will be, full of people. And I have proof because I've been in New York myself, in Times Square and Broadway, which I call the land of advertisements. Times Square looks like a busy place. A few people here and there. Actually, I take that back. There are a little more than a few. OK, a lot more than a few. I felt, just in Times Square and Broadway, there were more people there than in the whole of city of Madison. This is the first time that I saw so many people in one place. It was so crowded everywhere around Times Square and Broadway.
Learning chess from the best world champion
Why I was in New York? Was I in New York for a vacation? A wedding? A business trip? You’ll probably never know unless…well, you already know. Or you know me. Then you can at least guess.
I was there to attend a three day training session with the best chess player of all time: Former world champion Garry Kasparov, whom my father and I admired the most, among all the chess world champions in history, about 15 so far in total. He is super smart and remembers things like a super computer. I was told that he even remembered a telephone number that a journalist gave to him 20 years ago but he never used it. In the 1990’s he beat a super computer in chess built by IBM, which was big time news in the whole world and years before I was born.
I can tell you that it was quite an opportunity to learn chess from Mr. Kasparov, the King of Chess. From December 14-16, 2012 in New York, I was honored to have my second session of King Garry's training. The first time was in the beautiful Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, Missouri last summer. At the training session, each of the five participants (students) presented 6 games from his/her recent chess tournaments in the front of everyone. Mr. Kasparov would analyze the games with us in great depths as the presentation went along. He showed us students things about chess we could never learn anywhere else. He also asked us questions about our games. Most of the time, they were very tough questions. Questions we never thought before. He was very nice to us but his questions were hard to answer (correctly, anyway). It is a really incredible experience to be in his training session. Such game presentations from us students took two and a-half days out of the three day training session.
The remaining half day at the end of the training session was for tests. I personally think that I didn't do so well on my presentation this time, most likely because the games I presented were not that great. I did pretty well on the tests, though. I solved one puzzle with complete accuracy and was half correct on the second one.
At the end, Mr. Kasparov kindly invited me to his next training session in St. Louis in the summer of 2013 again. Naturally, I am very excited about that. I will try to play some really good games before that comes so that I will have great games to present to the best World Champion, Garry Kasparov.
The five participants of the Kasparov chess training in New York were:
Kayden Troff, age 14, U-14 world champion 2012
Sarah Chiang, age 15, U12 silver medalist, 2009
Samuel Sevian, age 12, U-12 world Champion, 2012
Jeffrey Xiong, age 12, U10 silver medalist, 2011
Awonder Liang, age 9, U8 world champion, 2011
Transportation
We bought an unlimited weekly pass for the Subway for $28 instead of $2.50 a ticket. One time, though, we couldn't get through because my father used the pass for me (little kids were supposed to be free) and he couldn't get through because it said 'Just Used' so I went back and as a result, we were both stuck. Then we borrowed someone else’s card and both went through at the same time. I guess maybe individual tickets were better, as we only used the subway 6 times. Walking was the other alternative. One time we got off at 33rd street to see the Empire State Building and on the 34th, we walked all the way back to 47th Street. We walked to the subway station, of course, too.
Broadway Ad Ranking
Not only can chess players be ranked, but chess players can also rank ads. I saw some nice ads on Broadway. I would rank them like this:
1) Hyundai - I thought that the ad was actually pretty good and caught my eye.
2) M&M - Of course! Well one part I liked about this ad was when it showed M&M World. It used different M&Ms to form the picture. Nice art!
3) I thought one ad that was funny was a LG ad and it was being displayed on a LG TV screen.
4) I really liked the ‘projected’ ads which looked like they were projected on the side of a building, not like a billboard, or attached, projected. (One downside was when it rained though.)
5) The rest is a tie between all others.
by Awonder
A lot of People
New York is, and always will be, full of people. And I have proof because I've been in New York myself, in Times Square and Broadway, which I call the land of advertisements. Times Square looks like a busy place. A few people here and there. Actually, I take that back. There are a little more than a few. OK, a lot more than a few. I felt, just in Times Square and Broadway, there were more people there than in the whole of city of Madison. This is the first time that I saw so many people in one place. It was so crowded everywhere around Times Square and Broadway.
Learning chess from the best world champion
Why I was in New York? Was I in New York for a vacation? A wedding? A business trip? You’ll probably never know unless…well, you already know. Or you know me. Then you can at least guess.
I was there to attend a three day training session with the best chess player of all time: Former world champion Garry Kasparov, whom my father and I admired the most, among all the chess world champions in history, about 15 so far in total. He is super smart and remembers things like a super computer. I was told that he even remembered a telephone number that a journalist gave to him 20 years ago but he never used it. In the 1990’s he beat a super computer in chess built by IBM, which was big time news in the whole world and years before I was born.
I can tell you that it was quite an opportunity to learn chess from Mr. Kasparov, the King of Chess. From December 14-16, 2012 in New York, I was honored to have my second session of King Garry's training. The first time was in the beautiful Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, Missouri last summer. At the training session, each of the five participants (students) presented 6 games from his/her recent chess tournaments in the front of everyone. Mr. Kasparov would analyze the games with us in great depths as the presentation went along. He showed us students things about chess we could never learn anywhere else. He also asked us questions about our games. Most of the time, they were very tough questions. Questions we never thought before. He was very nice to us but his questions were hard to answer (correctly, anyway). It is a really incredible experience to be in his training session. Such game presentations from us students took two and a-half days out of the three day training session.
The remaining half day at the end of the training session was for tests. I personally think that I didn't do so well on my presentation this time, most likely because the games I presented were not that great. I did pretty well on the tests, though. I solved one puzzle with complete accuracy and was half correct on the second one.
At the end, Mr. Kasparov kindly invited me to his next training session in St. Louis in the summer of 2013 again. Naturally, I am very excited about that. I will try to play some really good games before that comes so that I will have great games to present to the best World Champion, Garry Kasparov.
The five participants of the Kasparov chess training in New York were:
Kayden Troff, age 14, U-14 world champion 2012
Sarah Chiang, age 15, U12 silver medalist, 2009
Samuel Sevian, age 12, U-12 world Champion, 2012
Jeffrey Xiong, age 12, U10 silver medalist, 2011
Awonder Liang, age 9, U8 world champion, 2011
Transportation
We bought an unlimited weekly pass for the Subway for $28 instead of $2.50 a ticket. One time, though, we couldn't get through because my father used the pass for me (little kids were supposed to be free) and he couldn't get through because it said 'Just Used' so I went back and as a result, we were both stuck. Then we borrowed someone else’s card and both went through at the same time. I guess maybe individual tickets were better, as we only used the subway 6 times. Walking was the other alternative. One time we got off at 33rd street to see the Empire State Building and on the 34th, we walked all the way back to 47th Street. We walked to the subway station, of course, too.
Broadway Ad Ranking
Not only can chess players be ranked, but chess players can also rank ads. I saw some nice ads on Broadway. I would rank them like this:
1) Hyundai - I thought that the ad was actually pretty good and caught my eye.
2) M&M - Of course! Well one part I liked about this ad was when it showed M&M World. It used different M&Ms to form the picture. Nice art!
3) I thought one ad that was funny was a LG ad and it was being displayed on a LG TV screen.
4) I really liked the ‘projected’ ads which looked like they were projected on the side of a building, not like a billboard, or attached, projected. (One downside was when it rained though.)
5) The rest is a tie between all others.