From Daddy:

Nathaniel placed 10th in the 2010 AZ state chess championships K-3 section. I don’t know the exact number but I suspect there was approx 125 kids in his section. Over 600 hundred kids participated in the tournament.

He won 5, tied 1 and lost 1 game.

Yesterday I left my chess bag behind the car and my dad ran over it. I was lucky my clock and Monroi were saved by the the pieces being crushed on top of them. My dad was so mad. My little sister cried because it ruined the bag and pieces I gave her from chess camp.

Me and my little sister who also likes chess, played GM Shulman in a simul one Saturday too. We lost but it was fun. Here are our pictures from that.

My dad and I were on TV for the camp too. Our local PBS channel’s news show, Horizon air date of July 15. When I wrote this, this was the link.

FEN: 6r1/ppp2k2/3p4/2b1p3/3nPn2/3P4/PP1Q1Pq1/1R3RK1 w – -

I check-mated the person in 25 moves, playing black. In move  7, Bxf7+, this is an ok move we each get 6 points. He gets a rook and a pawn and I get a bishop and a knight. So we are even. Next on move 17, my pawn is on g5 his queen can not move, he has one way to escape taking my pawn on g5. I get a bishop for two pawns. Move 21, h3, he is giving me a free pawn and his king is in a pin. Bxh3 I take the pawn. Move 24, Qh3+ now no mater what he does I can check mate him.

A FEN “record” defines a particular game position, all in one text line and using only the ASCII character set. A text file with only FEN data records should have the file extension “.fen”.

A FEN record contains six fields. The separator between fields is a space. The fields are:

1. Piece placement (from white’s perspective). Each rank is described, starting with rank 8 and ending with rank 1; within each rank, the contents of each square are described from file a through file h. Following the Standard Algebraic Notation (SAN), each piece is identified by a single letter taken from the standard English names (pawn = “P”, knight = “N”, bishop = “B”, rook = “R”, queen = “Q” and king = “K”)^[1]. White pieces are designated using upper-case letters (“PNBRQK”) while Black take lowercase (“pnbrqk”). Blank squares are noted using digits 1 through 8 (the number of blank squares), and “/” separate ranks.
2. Active color. “w” means white moves next, “b” means black.
3. Castling availability. If neither side can castle, this is “-”. Otherwise, this has one or more letters: “K” (White can castle kingside), “Q” (White can castle queenside), “k” (Black can castle kingside), and/or “q” (Black can castle queenside).
4. En passant target square in algebraic notation. If there’s no en passant target square, this is “-”. If a pawn has just made a 2-square move, this is the position “behind” the pawn.
5. Halfmove clock: This is the number of halfmoves since the last pawn advance or capture. This is used to determine if a draw can be claimed under the fifty-move rule.
6. Fullmove number: The number of the full move. It starts at 1, and is incremented after Black’s move.

If you want to challenge to me a game my name is nathan01