A Camp with the Champ

The third edition of the Metropolitan Chess Camp took place in Los Angeles from 10 to 14 July. More than one hundred players took part in it. The age of the participants varied from young kids aged five or six to experienced masters aged above sixty.
The trainer’s team was a mixture of experienced local coaches (GM Melik Khachiyan, IMs Armen Ambartsoumian, Andranik Matikozian and Zhanibek Amanov) plus two non-US residing GMs- Vadim Milov and yours truly.


However, the pearl in the crown was the presence of the reigning World Champion Vishy Anand. For a second consecutive year the Metropolitan Chess founder and national master Ankit Gupta managed to treat the lucky campers with the knowledge of a world class player.
The lectures were conducted in the comfortable Radisson hotel situated within a walking distance from the Los Angeles International airport.
The schedule was tough, especially for the lower-rated participants and included after-class activities like simuls, blitz tournament and even a bughouse one! After all, chess should be fun, should not it?


Anand showed some of the recent top GM games, including his own victory against Jon Ludvig Hammer from the Sandes Masters tournament in Norway in May as well as games of his colleagues from the recent top-GM events.
The last day of the event saw a simul by the World Champion against twenty selected players from the camp and a game against the chess.com members. More than ten thousand players took part in the latter, but it had to end prematurely as the servers went down. From Anand’s over-the-board opponents two were luckier than the others. Michael Brown drew his game (and he did so in the previous year as well!) while the ten year old Marcus Miyasaka won his one!

The sessions of the World Champion were recorded and will be released on a DVD soon. So were mine in one of the training day :)