Thank You!

I'd like to say a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has donated to my chosen charity "Save the Children", which I'm supporting as a part of my chess challenge. With your help we've already raised £325!! And if you haven't donated yet - why not? It's for a very good cause! My donations page for "Save the Children" is here, please have a look!

I didn't do too well in the Golders Green Rapidplay, I only got 2 out of 6 but had interesting games. The problem seemed to be getting short of time and then blundering or running out of time - not a good strategy in the rapidplay! But I managed to get 1 out of 2 against the Kings Indian without knowing the theory. It's always a good fun playing something you haven't played before. Now I need to look in the book to figure out how I should have played!

My next chess game will be on Thursday for the second Hackney team. I was promised a good game as I will be on one of the top boards there. Hmmm, I wonder what sort of opening I should experiment with this time... Apart from that I'm continuing my training. This week my focus is on practicing tactics and analysing my own games. Hopefully, reading "Positional Play" by Dvoretsky and Yusupov should help me in identifying positional mistakes in my own games. I hope you agree - positional analysis of own games is the hardest thing of all because a computer can't help you with that like with the tactics!

And on Wednesday I'll have a bit of time off from chess as I'm going to see Arctic Monkeys in Wembley Arena. Now I have very high expectations after seeing Green Day a couple of weeks ago! The other great thing is I'm going to a great Indian restaurant beforehand - I love Indian food! On Friday I also went to a gig with my friend Karen. Her Canadian boyfriend bought the tickets, but had to go away on business, so I agreed to come instead of him to see a Canadian band "Tegan and Sara" which I've never heard of before. Karen too hadn't seen them live and didn't know much about them apart from that they were twins. It didn't take me too long to figure out that something was a bit odd as I got a strange feeling I was witnessing the biggest congregation of lesbians I've ever seen. I have nothing against lesbians - just felt a bit out of place, in the same way a heterosexual bloke would feel when walking into a gay bar, I guess! I wouldn't even want to imagine what lesbians feel like by living in this predominantly heterosexual world... I quickly figured that Tegan and Sara were lesbians too - hence the big following. It was interesting to observe a bit of the world I've hardly ever seen before. It makes you appreciate once again that we should not forget how diverse people are and take it into consideration even when we go about our day-to-day business.

Save The Children!

Hi there.

As you already know, I am trying to get into the English women's team in time for the Chess Olympiad in September 2010. Since this is a very serious and difficult challenge for me, it gives me a perfect opportunity to fundraise for a charity. My favourite charities are for children and this time I chose to support "Save The Children". This charity does amazing work in the UK and all over the world to help vulnerable children. "Save The Children" deliver life-saving supplies to children in response to major emergencies across the world. They work very hard on long-term development projects to develop healthcare, establish food supplies, education and protection for children. And they also try to improve children's future by campaigning for their rights. You can see more about this charity's work on their website: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/

Please support me in my chess challenge by donating to "Save The Children". Your money will be put to a great use for the benefit of millions of children across the world. Here is my donations page for "Save The Children": http://www.justgiving.com/Maria-Yurenok

I hope you would be encouraged to give even more of your support to "Save The Children" when you read on my blog about many ups and downs of my challenge throughout the next 12 months. Thank you in advance for all your donations however big or small. Every penny makes the difference!

Maria Yurenok