Activities
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Chess at Las Vegas
We went to Las Vegas for a week so that we could play in a chess tournament. This was the biggest chess tournament in my life so far because of the prizes. These are the prizes in my section from first to tenth: $6000- $3000- $1600- $1000- $800- $700- $600- $500- $400- $400. Before this tournament, the biggest tournament that I have went to had about $300 for first place and before this tournament the most money I have ever won in a chess tournament was $75.
1st day: We came to Las Vegas one
day early so we got to explore a lot. During the day we walked through
the city stopped at a few stores including M&M World. It had four
floors; the first floor had all the little souvenirs that you can
imagine related
to Las Vegas and M&M. The Second floor had M&M dispensers all over the
place, with a bunch of different colors. The third floor had a movie
theater and more M&M dispensers but on this floor you can right things
on the M&M instead of just the traditional M. Maybe you can make the
alphabet using M&Ms. On the fourth floor; there was a racecar with a
bunch of M&M logos on it. There were also other things like M&M chess
sets and M&M monopoly and M&M puzzles and M&M checkers. During the night
of the first day we watched a show with a bunch of performers running
around and doing flips. There were two clowns that came out momentarily
and do really funny things. The show had a huge pool of water on the
middle of the stage, so that made it entertaining too. There were many
great things that happened in the show, like a person that got caught on
fire, but he didn’t seem to notice anything. But the best thing about
the show was when they grabbed someone from the audience and made him
climb up a ladder that hung from the top of the ceiling directly above
the water. There were a few actors at the top of the ladder, looking as
if they would give instructions to the person. The guy was wearing a
suit so it took a really long time to go up the ladder, mainly because
of his dress shoes. When he reached the top, one of the actors jumped
off the thirty feet ladder and landed smoothly into the water. After
this happened there seemed to be a huge commotion at the top of the
later, and the person from the audience was shaking his head
ferociously. All of a sudden one of the actors pushed him off the
ladder, and he went
flailing in the water with a huge splash. When he came out of the water
he took a bow. After this we learned to our huge relief, that he was an
actor, and was placed purposefully in the Audience.
2nd day: We went to a hotel called Luxor, because the whole hotel was shaped like a pyramid. We took a bunch of pictures, of the hotel, and visited the shops inside of it. We also went onto the monorail, and we looked around at the city. We didn’t get off at any stops because, so we just went in a circle. We went back into the hotel to quickly rest up, before the first round started. After about a few hours of sleep, we got up and went down to see our pairings, or who we were going to play. I was playing someone named Albert D Gardener with the rating of 1600 from the state of Nevada. My rating was 88 points higher than him (16884), so I was a little bit better than him. But this guy had 40 years of experience with him, so I didn’t know what to expect. It was a long game, about 5 hours long, I started with a slight advantage, and used that little advantage to slowly beat him.
3rd day: The third day was the first of many days where I would have 2 games per day. This turned out to be a really hard experience. The first game, I played a person named Anthony S Harbone (1628) from the state of California. Toshihiro later played this person too. But he had a much easier time of it because Anthony blundered1 a checkmate in one very early in the game, so Toshihiro won in 9 moves while it took me about 40 to 50 moves to beat him, with a nice endgame tactic to finish him off. My third game was against Paul Bumblauskas (1634) from Georgia. He played an opening that I didn’t quite understand and the game was really complicated the whole time. I started winning after a while, but I couldn’t find a win, so I sacked2 a few pawns, but that didn’t really work out very well so I ended up just drawing3. After the second day of the chess tournament, I had 2.5 points out of the 3 points possible.
4th day: During the fourth game, I
played someone named Pablo Er Banuelos (1636) from North Carolina. He
was a really good at chess, and I had to play really well during the
opening. I won a queen for a rook, but he kept on playing really hard.
It took me eighty moves to beat him, but it was a hard and slow eighty
moves. On the fifth game I played Kevin Erick (1666). After a few moves,
I couldn’t find any way to proceed while; my opponent might have a plan.
I didn’t want to risk anything so I offered a draw, and he took it.
After this game, I had 4 out of 5 points (3 wins and 2 draws.)
5th day: During the sixth game, I
played a person called Ivan Troufanov (1606) from California. I was
white and even though white moves first, so white has the slight
advantage at the beginning, I was trying equalize after the first 8-9
moves. I made a mistake, by trading off his bad piece for one of my best
pieces. Neither of us could find any play after 20 moves so we both
agreed to a draw. My last round was probably the round where I felt the
most pressure. If I lose, I go home with absolutely nothing, ZERO
dollars. If I draw I get about 150 dollars, 100 dollars less than the
entry fee. (The entry fee was about $250.) If I win I get 1450 dollars.
I pretty much that a draw won’t cut it. If it was a drawn position, I
would have to try to play for the win, despite the chances of losing, by
doing so. I played someone named Willie Campers Jr. he had half a point
more than me, so he had 5 out of 6, while I had 4.5 out of 6. This was
probably the best game in my life, because he lost a pawn, at the
beginning, even though I was in some time pressure, (the time control
was you get two hours for your first forty moves, then you get an extra
hour after the initial forty moves) then I won an exchange (a rook, 5
points, for a knight, 3 points) and after that, I won. I was so happy
after this game, because I have never won anything more than 100
dollars, then suddenly I won 1452 dollars and 75 cents! After the normal
chess tournament, I attended the blitz tournament, which is a really
fast game where each person only has five minutes. This was the most
tiring tournament I had in my life. It started 10:45 pm all the way to
3:30 am. Some guy joked, that 50% of the tournament is staying awake,
40% is not losing on time, and 9% skill and 1% luck. This probably held
true because I beat many people that had
a
rating from 100 to 200 rating points higher than me. In the end of this
tournament I got 7 out of 10, which got me $180. So in the end, I got
exactly $1632.75 at Las Vegas.
6th day: Actually part of the blitz tournament was on the sixth day, but I will count that as the fifth day, because it started on the fifth day. We all had to wake up at 6:00 am because we went to the Grand Canyon that day, and we needed to start early because it is about a 2-4 hour drive. That gave me about an hour and a half of sleep, because it’s hard for me to sleep on the car, I’m not exactly sure why. We went on the sky walk at the Grand Canyon, which is a glass sidewalk that goes directly over the Grand Canyon, which is pretty scary, because it feels like the glass will fall out from under you, and you will fall down the 4000 feet drop under you. After that, we got to go on the ranch that they made. We went horseback riding, which was pretty fun. It was kind of scary at first, because it was really bouncy, and I thought I was going to fall off, but after a while, I got used to it. We went back to Las Vegas, and I wanted to go back to the M&M store to see if we can watch the movie in the theater that we saw on the first day. Unfortunately we couldn’t because the theater part of the M&M store closes at 8:00 pm and so we just went to the first floor and clothes, because they were pretty cool.
This story has exactly 1632 words in, the amount of money I won.
by YoYo
Day 1: Recently at school I learned that Las Vegas was the 30th most
populated city in the United States and Seattle was 28th or 27th. I was
surprised at this because I always thought that Las Vegas was crowded
and had more people than Seattle. When we reached Las Vegas I finally
understood why it was the 30th most populated city. It was because Las
Vegas had a lot of people but not a lot of people actually lived there I
think that over 80% of the people there are visitors and 20% of the
people live there. So if we combine them together I think Las Vegas
could be the third most populated right behind Pennsylvania. The reason
why we came to Las Vegas was because there was a chess tournament that
held there and we were planning to play in the chess tournament. When we
got off the airplane the first thing I saw was a casino right in the
airport. When
I asked my dad why there was a casino right in the middle of the
airplane he told me that literally every building had a casino in it. We
decided to rent a car so that we could drive around and go to the Grand
Canyon on the last day of our trip. After we rented the car from Budget
we decided to first check in to our hotel and then walk around to see
what is nearby and where the show was later on in the day. After we
checked into our hotel we figured out that the show was actually right
across the street from our hotel. The hotel that the chess tournament
was in the hotel that we lived in was called Bally and the show was in a
hotel called Bellagio. We decided to try to find 
somewhere to eat, in
Las Vegas there are so many people so that basically every store there
is filled with people we finally found a store called fat burger. My dad
says that there is also a fat burger in Seattle. After eating a
delicious fat burger my brother said that he wanted to go to the m&m
store right down the street. The store was really cool it had m&m
t-shirts shoelaces chess pieces it literally had everything in M&M stile
except for checker even though my brother says there were don’t listen
to him. The show that we went to was very cool because they put actors
in the Audience so when a person came to pick an Audience the people
that they picked were just actors. In the show the Actors played cool
tricks like flipping and jumping off a 50 foot ladder and all the thing
acrobats would do. The show had a very cool setting it was on a stage
but the stage was basically a gigantic swimming pool. There was also
these two clowns that came out occasionally and they would do some
really funny stuff like one clown was trying to hit is head with a
hammer and then land on a pillow but somehow he would always miss the
pillow. We were very lucky that we did not get front row seats because
everybody in the front row got splashed with water when the stage
started to rain and when the clowns were trying to clean there umbrella.
Overall I think the show was a fantastic experience. After the show we
went to eat at Panda Express. The store was very noisy because every 1
minute the fire alarm would go off so basically I had have my hands
cover my ear every second or else I would get started every minute.
Eventually the fire alarm stopped going off. We went back to our hotel
and had a great sleep.
Day 2: We woke up in the morning and we decided to go to the china town
that was in Las Vegas my mom had heard of a store that was very good and
she wanted to eat there so we went into our black car that we had rented
from budget and drove down to china town we had problems finding the
place because all the building look the same we eventually found it. The
store was called Wendy’s café and. don’t think it is the fast food that
serves Hamburgers. It was actually a Chinese restaurant the thing that
don’t get is why they call it Wendy‘s café when it is a Chinese
restaurant none the less the food tasted good and we were satisfied.
After the brunch we decided to go shopping at the Chinese super market
right down the street. We bought some bread and some apples. We went
back into the car and we decided to go to the hotel that called Luxor
the reason why we wanted to go to this hotel is because the shape of the
hotel was shaped like a pyramid and it even had its own Sphinx so we
were wondering what could be in the hotel that was shaped like an
Egyptian Pyramid. We got into our car and drove down to the hotel the
inside of the hotel
was like any other hotel. It had its own casino,
lobby, shows, and stores. But the outside of the hotel was awesome we
took pictures a lot of pictures of the hotel with the Sphinx. After
seeing the luxor we decided to head back to Bally’s to rest before our
first round started. The first game that I played I drew which I was
very happy with because my opponents rating was 100 rating points high
than mine.
Day3: This day the whole day was going to be playing chess. In the morning I ate a very delicious food that was very western style with it had eggs potatoes and it was supposed to have sausages but I think it forgot all about it. So my mom decided to go over there tomorrow and get them. My next chess game I played I also drew but it was perfectly fine with me because his rating was also 100points higher than mine. After the game I quickly went back upstairs to take a nap and to prepare for the nest game that I would be playing. The next game I also drew which was again fine with me because he was again 100 points higher rated that me.
Day4: This day we ate the same
food as yesterday and yet they also forgot to give us some stuff for
example egg that was in the Japanese breakfast. The first game I played
today was my first game against a kid and the first game that I won.
There was this very funny thing that happened right before the game.
When my mom gave me a water bottle that was in the water tank next to
the place that we played our game when I drank the water It was salty! I
instantly threw up. I couldn’t believe how good quality the hotel had.
My dad told me later
on that if that had happened in japan the whole
entire building would be shut down. The next game was a very tough game
my opponent was a very strong player and at the end I blundered a queen
so I resigned immediately.
Day5: Today I had the easiest and the hardest game the first game I won in 9 moves, my brother was a little bit mad because earlier on in the tournament my brother also played him but it took him at least 2 hours while it took me two minutes. The next game was really hard I thought that he played a weird opening but it was really just theory. But by the time I realized that I had a very bad position so I lost. In the tournament I scored 3.5 and my brother scored 5.5 tying for second place. The blitz tournament that was later on in the day was really fun except for the fact that it ended at 4:00 in the morning I came in short of one point of getting anything. But my brother got 180 dollars
Day6: Today we will go to the grand canyon we went into our car and I instantly fell asleep because I had only two hours of sleep before I had to get out of bed and get into. For breakfast we ate at Mcdonald. We stopped at a place to look at the view and to eat our McDonald breakfast then we headed toward the Grand Canyon. We drove for 2 hours we finally got there. The first stop that we went to was to go to the sky bridge and then we went to guano point which is a place that they used to store bat dropping. The last one was a ranch we rode the horse and It was kind’ve scary because once we got so close to the cliff that I thought that my horse might jump off. After the great feeling in Arizona we headed back to our hotel to check out. This trip was worth it. It is the best trip ever. (but of course I say that every time).
by ToTo