The feelgood story of the day

May 25, 2020 6:50 AM

From homeless refugee to chess prodigy, 9-year-old dreams of becoming youngest grandmaster. Follow up on a Nicholas Kristof story from last year on M-F
posted by growabrain (6 comments total)

Between February 2018 and March 2019, after promising performances in the New York City Mayor's Cup and the city championship, Tani had risen to 1,200 ratings points (read: He would checkmate you in eight moves)

In my experience, players rated 1200 are doing well if they can find the hotel!

But I'd be concerned about an 8 or 9 year old with that rating, because who knows how good they really are? Kids get better much faster than they accrue wins, very often. And Tani is now rated about 2000, having gained 800 points in a little more than a year. So you never know, if you get paired against a child, if their graph is going to look like that, or if they are actually just a decent player who is about as good as they will ever be.

-- a feat that was incredibly hard to achieve even for children playing since they were 3 or 4 years old.

Well, I don't know about that. IN MY DAY the lowest USCF rating was about 900; since then, they have introduced rating classes, intended for children, down to maybe 300.So it may well take kids a longer time now to haul themselves up past 1000, even if they are very good, especially if they mostly play in scholastic tournaments against other children who all have low ratings.

It looks like a rating of 1200 would put an 8-year-old at about the 100th highest rank for their age.
posted by thelonius at 9:21 AM on May 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think what I love is that once they got the year of rent paid, they made a foundation to help other refugees with the rest. What amazing people, and what a way to live their faith.
posted by corb at 10:13 AM on May 25, 2020 [4 favorites]

It looks like a rating of 1200 would put an 8-year-old at about the 100th highest rank for their age.

As you said there's a big difference between being plateaued and being on your way up - 1200 put him at 100th place among 8-year-olds, but his current 2000+ puts him at 3rd place among 9-year-olds.

(I'm really more of a chess spectator than a player but 1200 is pretty achievable for an adult who wants to spend some time learning to play, while 2000 is probably top 5% of rated players.)
posted by atoxyl at 1:26 PM on May 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

I’ve taken up serious chess in my middle age and have spent more than 3 years climbing up towards about 1600 strength. 2000 strength in a year is a very impressive feat.
posted by interogative mood at 4:37 PM on May 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

It is very impressive indeed, and it does lead one to think that he is GM material. There are people who try all their lives to get a USCF expert rating, and fall short.
posted by thelonius at 5:47 PM on May 25, 2020

Thanks for this! Such an uplifting read.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 4:34 AM on May 26, 2020