World Youth Chess Championships - Greece

Report by Amy Officer

The 2004 World Youth Chess Championships was held in Heraklio, Crete,
Greece. The Scottish team was as follows:
u/10 boy -- Jonathan Wright 4/11
u/10 girl -- Rhian Hughes 5.5/11
u/12 boy -- Connor Woods 4/11
u/14 boy -- Andrew Green 5/11
u/14 girl -- Amy Officer 4.5/11
u/16 boy -- Ivan Stokes 4/11
Coach - Esben Lund

We were accompanied by Jeremy Hughes, Steve Wright and Peter Woods. The
Scottish team left in two groups, one from Glasgow and one from Edinburgh.
We met up in London, Heathrow - even Esben arrived from Denmark at the same
time. The flight to Greece was overnight so we were all very tired on
arrival in Crete. After a twenty mile bus journey we eventually arrived at
the hotel at around 10am very hot, tired and bothered!
The Creta Maris Hotel is a luxury five-star hotel and was really good
although there was a VERY long wait to get into the rooms on the first day!

Play only started the next day so we had lots of time to settle in and see
who was there. I was really happy to see all my friends from the South
African National Squad. It was interesting to discover that the Scottish
group had six players and the South Africans had thirty! After introducing
the South African girls to the Scottish team, they all fancied a certain
male team member who shall go unnamed!!!

After lunch each day we had preparation with Esben as play only started at
4.30pm!

The competions were hard although everyone in the team got wins! Esben was
a great coach and we all learned a lot from him! He put in a great deal of
preparation work and Peter told us that the first thing that Esben did when
he got up in the morning was reach for a chess book!

Generally there was only one round per day so we had a fair amount of free
time when we played snooker, table-tennis and went swimming. We had lovely
pools, about thirteen of them, at the hotel although the sea was only a few
steps away! One day Steve took Jonathan, Connor and myself snorkelling in
the sea which was amazing, we saw flat fish, sea urchins and loads of
different kinds of fish!! I'd never been snorkelling before so it was a new
experience for me. Usually the weather was lovely although it rained for
two days straight and our rooms were flooded!! Ivan and Andrew survived an
attack of ants through the night but unfortunately slept in for their round
the next day.

We had a rest day after round six and most of us relaxed around the pool.
Jeremy, Rhian, Steve and Jonathan went to Knossos to see the ruins. After
the rest day we went back into the "routine" of eat, sleep, prep, play.

All in all it was a fantastic 2 weeks and we were all sad to leave. We
played chess, had fun, met new faces and caught up with all the old ones!
Personally, I was sorry to say goodbye to all my friends but hopefully I'll
get to meet up with them again next year. I'm sure everybody would agree
that Jeremy, Peter, Steve and Esben did a great job supervising us all and
making sure that we didn't get into too much trouble!!

Amy Officer