Sunday, August 7, 2011

Another young grandmaster

Daniil Dubov has achieved the grandmaster title at the age of fourteen. While still not the youngest in history, nevertheless it surprises me how easily the current youngsters get their GM titles.

Read the story at Chessbase

2 comments:

Peter Long said...

Hi Jimmy,
When I served on the FIDE Trainers Commission I had a chance to have many discussions on talent and especially of kids with some of the top trainers in the world. Some of the things all agreed on are as follows:
1. No one makes a champion at 9 or 10. It takes 3 years to prepare a player with talent to win an event such as World Youth, European Junior, etc. So unless anyone dares to claim he started preparing a child for a championship a 6 or 7, it is innate ability, environment, etc. which means a winner or top finisher can come from anyway and all credit belongs to the kid. In short, trainers hate age group events under 14 years of age as it complicates development.
2. If not 2300 by 14, no real chance to be GM before pressures of school and then work take over unless through a career as a player or through incredible dedication because IM was achieved before 18 (or several norms) to make it in late 20's or early 30's which mean at best a 2500 GM.
3. Hence for me the benchmark has always been the level a Malaysian/Singaporean kid has at 14 and although 2000-2100 now can hold even a GM from time to time and even take the point of an IM, it is already almost too late in today's competitive world (not only chess). So without disrespecting anyone, any GM we are likely to have would have to come from Mas (if he can do a Wong Meng Kong) or one of the young talents we have who are under 12.
Cheers!
Peter

Jimmy Liew said...

1. this is interesting insight.

2. in my opinion, we need more than a 2500 GM. how many hundreds are there already in the world? if we can produce a Le Quang Liem, Wesley So , Giri, then it will be something. its probably easier in the women's world so maybe we should be focusing on our girls.

3. I disagree. Our GM will come from the current 10-14 years old (no disrespect to Mas and others)

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