In Pursuit of Wisdom

  Last Tuesday Ahyan and I played the 5th and 6th round of Tuesday Night Marathon online over chess.com arranged by Mechanics Chess Institute. The games are live analyzed by FIDE Master Paul Whitehead and Abel Talamantez. After a nice win by Ahyan at 5th round he was jointly in second position with 4 out of 5 in the open section which is phenomenal at his age and rating. Ahyan and I joined the commentary by invitation from TD Judit Sztaray after the 6th round for a short time. Here are some excerpts from our games and the commentaries. The TNM newsletter for this round may be found here -  https://www.milibrary.org/chess-newsletters/931

This finally happened.  Ahyan  defeated me for the first time in a competitive chess tournament despite my rating being more than 300 points than his. We are playing in 19th Henry Memorial Chess tournament today at Mechanics Chess Institute, San Francisco. This is a 5 round Swiss where after first 3 rounds both of us were at 2. Consequently I got white in 4th round against him. I gained a pawn putting some positional pressure and got greedy to get the second pawn. So I got into a long defensive position and miscalculated a pin which I thought I can defend. Well no. Ahyan piled all his pieces on the pinned Bishop despite having only 1 minute left in his clock. As it was a game in 40 with 5 seconds delay, seeing very low time in his clock, I didn’t resign until getting checkmated with the hope to flag him down on time. But we it didn’t work out for me. I have never given up any game in my life, and did my best to win. But kudos to him. Recently he had been crossing me in tactic...

2015 US National Junior Chess Congress was organized by Bay Area Chess during January 24th and 25th at Santa Clara Convention Center in the hearth of Sillicon Valley. The tournament had 8 different Age Level group - for Under 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20. Two groups for Age Level 6 and 8 were held in 25th January while the other 6 groups were a 2 days event. Ahyan Zaman, Bangladeshi American living in Fremont (California) won all the 5 games and clinched the National Junior Champion title in Age group 8 and Under. He is currently studying in 3rd grade of Parkmont School and is a regular member of the chess club NorCal House of Chess. 73 players participated in the Age 8 and Under group. Ahyan from Norcal House of Chess was 6th top seed by rating in this group. His final (5th) round game was the championship decider, where he faced top seed Adrian Kondakov of Berkeley Chess School which you can replay below - Above is the final result posted in...

Last month just before Eid, we went to a quick weekend trip to Lake Tahoe to have some breathe out of my busy office works. And know what, we enjoyed the short trip! We stayed in the beautiful David Walley's Resort few miles from South Lake Tahoe. The second day we spent time in South Lake Tahoe, specially on Gondola Ride. Here is a video and some pictures of that beautiful ride which goes more that 9000 feet above sea level. Just after coming back and just before the Eid day, Ahyan started his first day at public school . Saiful visited us from Atlanta in Eid night and spent a few days playing around Ahyan and Suhaila. I took him for a sight seeing to Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. He bought an XBox Kinect for Ahyan.

The eve of last year and the whole new year 2011 so far, I have been occupied with my daughter Suhaila and shopping with Ammu for my brother Rasel's marriage. I used my second week of paternity leave from office to visit my Uncle, Aunt and cousins in New York as well as send my Mom to Dhaka with my friend Paul. As a bonus we got snow, lots and lots of snow and snowfall in New York! In that sense this trip during 11th January to 17th January was a highly successful one. Ezaz dropped us in San Francisco Airport early morning so that we could catch our Delta Airlines flight at 8:30 AM on time. Kakku received us in JFK airport, New York. in the evening. That very night there was continuous snow fall that we watched over the window and enjoyed. As usual Abir, Asif, Roton, Kakku and Aunt were highly delighted to see Ahyan and Suhaila. The next day morning I and Ahyan got down in front of Kakku's house to help him clean snows and take some pictures during that time. The pictures fo...

From Blogs Long weekend of American Independence day was a good time for us recovering from the recent shock and having a great time with Bengali touch all around us. July 2nd, 3rd, 4th NABC 2009 (stands for North American Bengali Conference ) was successfully held in San Jose McEnry Convention Center . I, Shusmita, Ahyan, Nitol and Amin attended it all the 3 days. Thousands of Bengali speaking people came from all accross USA and Canada. While most of the crowd seemed to be from West Bengal, there were a decent amount of visitors, artists from Bangladesh as well. Highlights of this conference for me were chat with Humayun Ahmed , the stage performance of Runa Laila and getting to know the Bangladeshi Comedian Naveed Mahbub . The first night (Thursday) we had a little tough time to find a dinner place before attending Lopa Mudra, Srikanta and Anjan Dutta 's music. The second morning I came with Nitol and Amin in the morning to listen to the opening speech of Humayun Ahmed before...

This was my first trip to Grand Canyon although I have been looking for this for more than a year now. I, Shusmita, Ahyan and Nitol took the US Airways from San Jose Airport 23rd May Saturday 9 AM and returned from there at 5 PM flight 25th May Monday. Ahmed Amin flew from San Francisco to join us in the Phoenix airport and he returned early in Monday morning. The fun started at Phoenix airport while waiting for the rental car at Dollar Country. We were given a choice of either picking a PT Cruiser which I don't like or choosing a larger size Christler without any additional fee. We were delighted to get the bigger one and drove to a Mediterranean food center called Biaz market to finish lunch. The drive from Phoenix to Flag Staff was scenic but windy and rainy. I drove a little bit and then gave the steering wheel to Nitol to go for a quick sleep as last few nights we didn't get time for proper sleep due to my neighbor Tufail Bhai's farewell from west coast to east coast. ...

I went to Father's Night in Montessori Children's Care in Fremont 2 days back. I came back from office early that day at 5:30 PM. It was interesting to see him trying to show me what he can do. He tried moving some small balls with spoon from one pot to another, tried putting some very small balls in a pot in specific places, tried moving plastic maccaroni's from one plate to another. But when it was turn for singing, he was standing beside me and not joining the other kids. Miss betsy (Ahyan's Teacher of Redwood class) told he normally sings everyday. I guess due to his ear pain, Ahyan is a little bit uncomfortable today. My first father's night with Ahyan!