ICA Chess academy in NJ :Family Love And Hippyness Invade ICA 2008 Spring Tournament!

Whatever your stance on the 60’s hippy movement, the long-haired, tie-dye wearing stoners did get something right. In fact it’s something big John Lennon sang about when he said, “all you need is love.” Of course it’s not really all you need but it certainly doesn’t hurt and hence we get to the point of the article.

Nothing says love more then family, and in an effort to make a profit off this wonderful, and historical, familial phenomenon, we at the ICA have instituted an exciting new tournament twist. Relatively rookie at our tournaments is the sadly dubbed family competition, which allows for siblings to stop killing each other long enough to team up and see how their family stacks up against their brotherly, or sisterly rivals.

In essence, the competition isn’t much more then gathering up individual section results of all participating members of a single family and comparing them to others, but it is still a good idea. Now when I say that I mean, good for us, because it encourages families to fork over extra cash to sign up more then one kid, and well for you, the parents, and children, because if you end up doing well, AS A FAMILY, the entrance fee is waived for the next tournament. Just think, keep winning first in this one and you can compete at the ICA tournaments for free, forever, and ever.

However, kidding aside, we want to go further then the obvious, and encourage families to spend time nurturing an atmosphere of bonding between their children. Sure one child may not be as gifted as another, but that doesn’t matter as much, if the activity helps them grow closer because of it. In the future one can be the award winning chess player/hustler, and the other his well-dressed manager.

Except for the fact that we have figure out a better way of comparing results of families who have different numbers of family members entered, the idea is terrific.

Furthermore, this element may be a catalyst for future development of other, none traditional, chess-based competitions. Who knows what goodies we can come up with when not preoccupied with our own priorities?

Perhaps a Simul eloquently demonstrated by one of our summer counselor elites like Artur the “King” Yusupov, or Alex the big “A” Chernin?

This time around we had the Katz family(Alex, Josh, and Nick) in 3^rd, the Collins family (Alister/Shay, Andrella/Ella) in 2^nd, and the Barayev family (Isaac, and Jacob) in 1^st. All of them will receive some form of compensation as regards to the entry fee for our next tournament in the fall.

Unfortunately, the photographer probably forgot to take pictures of at least the winning siblings together, which is completely ridiculous, but all we can do is live, and if we find the time, learn a little.