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Day 10 of the WYCC 2013

 

The World Youth Chess Championship is coming to its end. Two more rounds to go before the new World Youth champions will be announced. We have met the coaches of the National team of Qatar Yulia Ryjanova and Hisham Hamdouchi who brought 9 boys and 4 girls to participate in the competition. They answered our questions:

 

  • Is chess amongst children popular in Qatar?

     

  • Yes, chess is popular enough in Qatar. We have very active Chess federation who does a lot for chess in general and for kids in particular. Many girls and boys study how to play chess. The leadership of our federation hires International chess coaches to develop game in Qatar.

     

  • So, there are 9 boys and 4 girls representing Qatar at this event. Yulia, do you train all of them?

     

  • No, my trainee is Hamda Al-Hajri. She plays in the category U-12. Another girl Alla Hussain participates in the same category. Two more girls participate in the group U-8: Hussain Fatima and Maryam Al-Hajri. We don't have players of the upper categories unfortunately.

     

  • How do you evaluate the performance of your girls, Yulia?

     

  • So far, our level is a bit weak. We still have to work hard improving ourselves. So, we came here to try our best and to get practice in participating in an international competition. As for my pupil, I was not expecting her to show something extraordinary. I am sure she could have played better. It happens sometimes, when you show worse performance than expected.

     

  • We wish you to gain more experience and good results in future.

     

The International Grandmaster Hisham Hamdouchi of France has been working with the Qatari male national team for some period while his wife Adina Hamdouchi has been training the female team of Qatar as well.

 

  • How are your boys doing at this championship, Hisham?

     

  • For all our boys it is their first participation in the world youth championship. Some of them play this time control for the first time in their lives. Actually they are playing better that I could expect. One of our boys has 3.5 points out of 9 rounds. This is not bad.

     

  • How did you prepare for this championship?

     

  • We had regular trainings in Doha. But our players are not used to play in the competitions. Moreover many of them discovered new openings during the championship. They miss practice, this is clear.

     

  • I know that you started to work with Qatari team not so long ago. How do you find working as a coach? Is it your first experience?

     

  • Yes, it has been 8 months already. I must confess it is quite challenging for me. It is always difficult to start working with young players, to try to form chess players in them. I had an experience working as a coach before. I worked with French team, all of them are adults. I worked with one young player who was the best in his category. Here it is another story: we had to start from the very beginning. In this sense, it is my first experience: to start from zero.

     

  • How do you find conditions of play here?

     

  • At the beginning it was a bit chaotic, I must confess. It is understandable that it happened due to a large number of guests and participants. Day by day everything was becoming better. If we forget these small problems in the beginning, we may say that comparing with other world youth competitions this championship is organized on a very good level.