A teenage player self introduction

My name is Anthoney Tsou, and I was born in Irvine, California. I am currently 12 years old, and I am a seventh grader at Rancho San Joaquin Intermediate School. At school, I maintain a 4.0 average, being a part of GATE classes. Besides being at school, I do other extracurricular activities. I swim for the Novaquatics swim team and won six individual gold medals at the Junior Olympics when I was 10 years old. I was also was a part of the Pacific Coast All Star team for swimming and traveled to Reno to compete with many different countries. Piano is also a daily routine for me. I have passed CM, certificate of merit, level 10 and plan to continue enjoying piano by learning new pieces and maybe even trying to compose new songs. I also love the sport of Chinese chess. I hope to be able to compete in the Labor Day tournament of America vs. Canada and hope to be able to participate in the 2008 Olympics for Chinese chess. With these goals in mind, I have become motivated and inspired to be a strong member of the Chinese chess community.

I started Chinese chess a year ago when I was at Chinese school. I had chosen Chinese chess as an elective since I had an American chess background and wanted to try something new. It was also beneficial for me to strengthen my mind, so Chinese chess had a clear spot on my list of things to learn. In the beginning, I had no clue what each piece was and its movements as well as the importance of each piece. Then, my Chinese chess teacher, Ms. Yin, started teaching me the basics, and before long, I had mastered the basics of Chinese chess. It seemed quite similar to American chess with the movements, so it was not completely challenging for me after I learned the basics. After a year of learning this mind game, I have thought of competing beyond the school level.

After quite some time, I realized that I actually liked Chinese chess quite a bit. I thought that it was more straightforward than American chess and had many more possibilities. When Ms. Yin told me about the upcoming tournaments in the year 2008, I became excited and decided that I should compete in these tournaments. I have decided to dedicate much of my time and effort to this sport for fun and to be able to match my skill level against those from all around the world. I hope that after I have taken a big step into my Chinese chess career, the outcome will be one that is hard-earned. I believe that Chinese chess will affect me both mentally and emotionally throughout life in a good way, and I plan to start this journey now to get a great head start and have a successful future.