Thursday, June 20, 2013

Pestaño: Greatest child grandmasters in history

Chessmoso
Thursday, June 20, 2013

CHESS is the only sport in town where children can compete on an equal level with adults. I have seen six or seven year old kiddies beat adults as old as 50 or 60.
Early chess prodigies were Paul Morphy and world champion José Raúl Capablanca, both of whom won matches against strong masters before becoming teenagers. Samuel Reshevsky was giving simultaneous exhibitions at the age of six.
Morphy is considered by Bobby Fischer the strongest player of all time.
In 1958, Fischer became a grandmaster, a record then, at 15 years and 6 months. It was not broken for 23 years until 1991 when wonder girl Judit Polgar became a GM 15 years and four months. Peter Leko beat that record in 1994 by one year and Ruslan Ponomariov became a GM at exactly 14 years old in 1997.
In 1999 Bu Xiang Zhi became the first 13-year-old GM. The youngest to become GM is Sergey Karjakin at an amazing 12 years and 7 months on 2002.
There is a future GM who might break the record of Karjakin and he is proudly Pinoy.
Alekhine Nouri of Taguig City has won the Open 8 Under title at the recent 14th Asean Age Group Chess Championships 2013 in Chiang Mai, Thailand and gained an outright Fide Master title with a rating of 2300.
“Our daily routine features 10 hours of training; no computer games, no TV. We only ease up on Sundays,” the chess prodigy’s father and personal coach Hamed Nouri, also a Fide Master, said.
He is only seven years old and is still in grade one.
I checked the past records. Not only is Alekhine the youngest FM in the Philippines but he is also the youngest ever in the world!
One measure of chess prodigies is the age at which they gain the Grandmaster title.
Below are the 10 players who have held the record for youngest grandmasters according to chessbase.com. The age listed is the age at which they qualified for the title.
1.) Sergey Karjakin (Ukraine)- 12 years and 7 months. 2.) Parimarjan Negi (India)- 12 years and 4 months 22 days. 3.) Magnus Carlsen (Norway)- 13 years and 4 months 27 days, 4.) Wei Yi (China) -13 years and 8 months 23 days. He is currently the youngest GM as he got the title early this year. 5.) Bu Xiang Zhi (China) -13 years and 10 months 10 days. 6.) Richard Rapport (Hungary)-13 years and 11 months 6 days. 7.)
Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan)- 14 years 0 months 14 days. 8.) Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine)-14 years and 17 days. 9.) Wesley So (Philippines)-14 years and one month 28 days, 10.) Etienne Bacrot (France)-14 years and 2 months .
Other notable records are Hou Yifan (China)-14 years and 6 months 16 days. She is also the youngest girl to become GM, breaking Judit Polgar’s record. Ray Robson (USA) became the youngest American GM at 14 years and 11 months 16 days. Fabiano Caruana of Italy also became a GM at 14 years and 11 months 20 days. Japanese origin Hikaru Nakamura , born in the USA, became a GM at 15 years and 2 months.
Another interesting record is that of the youngest players to gain a rating above 2600.
1.) Wesley So was rated at 2610 on October 2008 at the age of 14 years 11 months and 22 days. 2.) Teimour Radjabov got a rating of 2610 on April 2002 at the age of 15 years and 20 days. 3.) Magnus Carlsen had a rating of 2625 on January 2006 at the age of 15 years 1 month and 1 day. 4.) Sergey Karjakin achieved 2635 at the age of 15 years 2 months and 20 days. 5.) IIIya Nyzhnyk reach 2610 on May 2012 at the age of 15 years 7 months and 4 days. 6.) Anish Giri was rated at 2624 on March 2010 at the age of 15 years 8 months and 1 day. 7.) Fabiano Caruana reached 2620 on April 2008 at the age of 15 years 8 months and 2 days.
Cepca. Our monthly tournament will be this Sunday at Deep Blue in SM and starts at 1 p.m.
(boypestano@gmail.com,www.chessmoso.blogspot.com)

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