Positive Experiences at the Chinatown Street Festival

Hello all,

Here is a brief report of the festival:
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Chinatown Street Festival: Calgary Chess Club

Chinatown Street Festival is one of the most popular festivals in Calgary. Itconsists of merchant booths and entertainmentslocated at 3rd Ave and 1st St SE. It usually attract 50,000 people from allparts of Calgary. Every year this annual festivalconsists of the same activities: 3 on 3 soccer, mini golf, and Chinese Chess.However, there was something different about the9th annual Chinatown Street Festival. There were two tables set up with sixchess boards and pieces under 10'x 10' tent. Nextto the tent was a giant chess board that was set up by Bob Macfie, AngeloTolentino, Roy Yearwood, Raymond Ong and myself. The giant chess pieces wereassembled by our junior club players including the Tolentino brothers and Bill Xu. Then, the youngest of the Tolentino brother, Khino ("young Fischer"), placedthe assembled pieces on the giant board and ready to start a game against anyvisitors.

Regardless of the chilly weather in the morning, more and more visitors gatheredaround the giant chess board observing the gamebetween Bob Macfie and challengers from the crowd. The games on the giant chessboard were not short, the challengers actually givingBob a hard time at some point of the game. Other than the giant chess board wasa hit, visitors came to the tables to play chess against our president, StephanVasilev, and our veteran player, Roy Yearwood. Throughout the day, StephanVasilev, Roy Yearwood, and BobMacfie talked with visitors and answered any questions about our club. As wellthey handed out ACA&CCC pamphlets and Alberta Chess Reports. I helped answered any questions regarding to our junior chess club and passed out the CJCC newschedules. Stephan helped sellchess sets to visitors. It was nice to see the cooperation of our CCCexecutives.

Otherthan our CCC executives, we have many juniors playing chess in the festivalincluding David Zhang, YueKai Wang, Tony Cai,Diwen Shi, Chenxi Zhao, Kevin Zhao, Lee Ma, Gordon Cheung and juniors which Ihad already mentioned earlier in the report. Our juniors were playing blitz and bughouse. Some of our younger juniors werechallenged by visitors. It was suprising to see how our juniors were victoriousagainst visitors who are many times their age. I remembered seeing the AlbertaGrade 1 champion, PatrickTolentino, checkmating a visitor who claimed that he has been playing chess for more than 10 years. Never underestimate our juniors.

Later on the day, we have Raman Shanker dropped by to play chess games. The onlygame I saw Raman played was against Gordon Cheung. Raman easily won the game. Thanks for coming, Raman.

Overall the promotion of our club in this festival was a great success. We hopethat the visitors we met in this festival willcome to our club in the near future. It was a very positive experience for ourCCC executives, CJCC juniors, and visitors. Itwould be great if the CCC board will consider running the same thing in the 10thChinatown Street Festival. If we are doing thesame thing in the future, I strongly encourage our CCC/CJCC players to come outbecause after the festival you will be left withwonderful memories which I cannot explain unless you experience yourself.Stephan managed to capture some of the highlights of this festival and kindlyposted on the Calgary Chess Club Facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/photo_search.phpoid=2837384436&view=all

(I'm not sure if one need a facebook account to see these pictures).Again, I want to say "thank you" to all who came to help out in promoting chessand/or play chess in this festival. Special thanks to Stephan Vasilev, RoyYearwood, Bob Macfie, and Stacy Liu (Chenxi's mom) for helping with the teardown.

P.S. It would be great to see our CCC executives and CJCC players who came to the festival and write their experiences.
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Simon Ong
Secretary, Calgary Chess Club