Posted on 11/09/2021 10:40:16 AM PST by billorites
Once Abhimanyu Mishra and his father bought one-way tickets to get them from Englishtown, N.J. to Budapest, there was no turning back. The pandemic was still raging, but that tiny pathogen didn’t stop the countdown clock separating a 12-year-old boy known as Abhi from history.
Mishra was on a mission to become the youngest ever chess grandmaster.
“It was very scary and we knew it was a big risk,” Abhi said. “But we needed more tournaments. We had to try it.”
For 77 days over the summer, Abhi and his father Hemant lived out of a Hungarian hotel room that doubled as a chess bunker. They didn’t take time out to sample the local goulash or visit Buda Castle. In fact, they barely went out for non-chess purposes at all to avoid unnecessary exposure.
And then, deep into the third month, they finally thought about going home: Abhi Mishra had reached the revered status faster than anyone before him at 12 years, 4 months and 25 days. He had just 67 days to spare.
The previous mark had belonged to Sergey Karjakin, a Russian champion who is now 31 years old—a grizzled veteran by Mishra’s standards. For him, setting the record 19 years ago, at 12 and 7 months, was a stepping stone to a glittering career that established him as one of the top chess players in the world. In 2016, he even reached the world championship match, where he narrowly lost to Magnus Carlsen.
“I never thought it would last so long,’ Karjakin said. “Nineteen years is too much in our modern world where we see new records, new talents every half a year.”
Mishra shook the chess community at age 12 because by then he had already been playing the game for a decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Coming this winter to HBO...
From adagmator's Chess Channel.
From the comments:
Notably this was Abhi's 70th game in 77 days, as this hunt for the GM title was an absolute marathon.
when are the lefturd loons going to ruin chess by declaring all players equal
How? He beat out everyone.
I’ll kick his ass.
In tetherball…
I’ll kick his ass.
In tetherball…
Chess is racist, don’tcha know.
Essentially, if a machine can win, he wasn't interested in chess. The thrill was gone -- for him.
Trump and Bobby Fischer Discuss 3D Chess Strategy on Beating the Deep State (fake image)
I believe a variant of chess, Shogi, played in Japan makes machine memory much less a factor. From Wikipedia:
By comparison, shogi games average about 140 (half-)moves per game (or 70 chess move-pairs) whereas chess games average about 80 moves per game (or 40 chess move-pairs).
He is almost as scary looking as Damien. Pull his hair back and look for the mark.
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