Youngest Canadian Title Player

I believe now is official:

Jason Cao
Federation Canada
FIDE Title: FIDE Master

Medal statistics: Canada 9th place

Rk.		FED	gold	silver	bronze	Total
1		AZE	3	0	0	3
2		CHN	2	0	0	2
3		USA	1	2	0	3
4		POL	1	1	1	3
5		KAZ	1	1	1	3
6		UKR	1	0	1	2
7		MGL	1	0	0	1
8		BLR	1	0	0	1
9		CAN	1	0	0	1
10		IND	0	3	3	6
11		VIE	0	1	1	2
12		SVK	0	1	0	1
13		IRI	0	1	0	1
14		ARM	0	1	0	1
15		PER	0	1	0	1
16		RUS	0	0	3	3
17		SWE	0	0	1	1
18		NED	0	0	1	1

Chess Champ Cao is World Class

Jason at 2010 WYCC

The 2010 WYCC is a great experience for us, especially for Jason. He owes his success to so many people who helped and supported him.
Jason's school, Campus View Elementary in Victoria is one of the schools in Canada that introduced chess into the class. Jason felt that he was lucky that he could learn chess from his school. Mr. Gregory Churchill is Jason's chess teacher, who led Jason into the chess world and built a solid foundation for Jason to be able to continually improve. Jason believes Mr. Churchill is the best teacher. Jason benefits greatly from his school's chess program, he thinks that playing chess is good for his math, his reading and other school studies.
So many people helped Jason in the past two years. Thanks to the Victoria Junior Chess Club and to the Victoria Chess Club; and thanks to all the players who played chess with Jason or helped Jason.
Team Canada is like a big family. Andrei Botez, our delegation leader, did a great job! He helped, supported, and motivated Team Canada members with his hard work. Vlad Birarov is the only coach we had for the team and he helped Jason when he was not sure of some of his openings. Vlad also helped Jason prepare his games, and Jason said that he really liked the lines Vlad taught him. Vlad is a great coach! Victoria Doknjas, team players' mom, was the person who encouraged us to send Jason to 2010 WYCC and also efficiently post information on the team blog. Teresa Bellissimo, another team player's mom, was the person who helped to translate a lot of information from Greek into English and helped to monitor the U10 section. Andrew Giblon, team players' dad, helped with photos of Team Canada, updating the Team Canada blog, enhancing Team spirit by helping to organize the Team Awards Party. All other team members and their parents, whose names haven't been mentioned here, encouraged, supported and cheered Jason during the tournament.
We hope all parents and schools will see chess as a great sport for children to have the brain get exercised (chess is a sport in most countries). If Jason can be of any help in getting more children to play chess and getting more parents and schools to view chess as a great sport (not a game), he would be very happy.

Yes, chess is a great sport! GO CHESS!
Yunxu and Maureen (Jason Cao's Parents)

Jason performance in the news

In Victoria "The Colonist" newspaper
"Victoria boy, 9,takes first place in his age class at world chess tournament in Greece"

Read more

In Chessbase website:

"Another surprise was the Boys Under-10, which included top-seed American Samuel Sevian, rated 2105, yet which was won by unrated Canadian Jason Cao, who had a remarkable campaign throughout."

Canadian champion GM Spraggett blogging about WYCC

"Jason Cao shines at World Youth!"

"But the real story of Canada's participation this year was Victoria's Jason Cao gold medal in the Under-10 section!  Congrats Jason!!  Jason has earned bragging rights to being the strongest 9-year old in the world by virtue of his 8 wins, 2 draws and only 1 loss."



Read more on his blog.


Andrei

More video from WYCC will be posted here..

Now that I'm back to normal internet connecting speed I will post all the video's I got during the tournament. I will put together all the clips I got with each player. In maximum 2 weeks all the video will be uploaded.

Hope that everyone made it home safe.

Andrei