Abby Marshall on the Mind Sport Games in China

Varuzhan Akobian, Iryna Zenyuk, Alexander Shabalov and Abby Marshall; photo: Chess Life Online

Ever-interesting WFM Abby Marshall writes about her experiences in China at the 1st Mind Sport Games, at Chess Life Online.

Here's a brief sample of what Abby has to say:

The first day of any trip, no matter how good or bad it actually is, is always one of the most exciting days. How cool is it to wake up halfway around the world? So I’ll start there. Unfortunately, I instantly knew breakfast was going to be a big problem cause it ends at 10, but luckily jet lag saved me and I woke up reasonably early, was excited and took a bunch of dumb pictures of the room, and then fell back asleep and missed breakfast anyway. Well, the extra sleep definitely helped me because the American team made history by being, according to the hotel, the first tourists to walk to Tiananmen Square! We thought this was strange, because Jenn asked how long it would take and they said “one hour.” Huh. So by the third hour we are all probably thinking the same thing (one hour, maybe the only thing that could have been one is…day?), but this turned out to be one of the greatest decisions we made. We stopped in a park with lots of beautiful stone statues, and then in a cute tea shop where everyone drank endless amounts of Jasmine while Jenn read Cosmopolitan. The articles were in Chinese, but had teasing English subtitles (“how to have a blingy lifestyle”).