9 year old is YOUNGEST Chess Master

Today on Chess.com/tv we talked about the new 9 year old "youngest" master.  See article here: http://asbarez.com/90237/samuel-sevian-youngest-us-chess-master-ever/

Two Questions:

1. At this age, to what extent--if at all--do these kid prodigys know and memorize openings?  

    a. Is the real secret to their rating their tactical OTB, figuring it out for themselves, play?

    b. What about for an accomplished junior in U12 training with GMs?  How deep is the opening prep, knowledge of varied openings, and ability to say "hey, that's a Chigorin defense"

2. 9 year old master?  Is this a B.S. rigged set of games by the local club tourney director?  Suspicious abounded based on the point jumps this kid had.  

   a. if so, do we care?  It's USCF and not FIDE.

   b. Is FIDE euro trash? :)

I think it's due largely to naturally disciplined calculations skills, so if you want to call that tactics, I guess it is.  I think they automatically don't have to learn how to slow down and pay attention to important parts of the position.  Most of us approach the game as beginners wanting to move some pieces around and make meaningless threats, and end up playing a4 Ra3 or similar crap.  I don't think young kids who show talent and get coaching deal with these types of hazards at all, and other class player pitfalls such as not looking for a strong response from the opponent.  I think for whatever reason they're drawn to look at important aspects in the position from the beginning, and naturally try to find strong replies from the opponent.  So from day 1 they're spending their energy on refining good play and so it's no surprise that within a year or two they're 1st category players, and within a few years after that (and with some work) are masters.

I don't think openings have anything to do with it, although obviously with a good coach they can have quite an extensive opening repertoire.

I think once anyone starts to have a more disciplined way of looking at the board they're very close to the 1st category player rank.  The problem for most of us is by this time we have to unlearn a few years of bad habits we picked up along the way.  Plus at such a young age it's easier to absorb information, so that's how you get young masters.

9 is pretty young though.  If the rating is fake, then it will be known soon enough as the kid continues to play.  If he's half as good as his rating though (lets say at least 1st category) then he'll be master strength soon anyway.  If they want to put his name as youngest ever then maybe some investigation is required first.  It wouldn't be the first time false tourney results were turned in to boost rating points.

You guys forgot Jason Cao, 9 years old, younger then this guy and a FM, due to winning U10 World championship.. (hes canadian)

The point raised by the Chess.com/tv hosts was that the seemingly unscheduled Quad game (http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,181/) played just in time for him to eclipse the previous record.  

  Hey jhb,

    Yeah I do not agree with this "tournament" at all. If the USCF is going to keep on building "events" just for reasons like this to break records and coronate "Masters" then it is going to lose whatever credibility and prestige that they have left. He's a "false master" and you have to question if the intergrity of the games is solid too.

   -Mark

Not taking anything away from Jason Cao, it might be worth mentioning that the record for the youngest ever FIDE master belongs, AFAIK, to Tanuj Vasudeva (at 8 years 2 months and 3 days). As in Jason Cao's case, the FM title was awarded for winning a major tournament, not for exceeding the 2300 FIDE rating.

Returning to Samuel Sevian, the quad at the Mechanics got re-rated anyway to give him "only" 2196. No matter, he raked in 20 points a week later in a 20-player open tournament and the resulting 2006 rating was still good enough for a new record, although by a smaller margin (beat the old record by 3 days).

And he keeps playing better: just this weekend in a yet another major tournament, he reached 2232 USCF, after scoring his first ever win over a GM.

It would appear that jhbchess and ChessMarkstheSpot owe an apology to the kid.

Not sure why this is being characterized as disparaging.  The OP is a recap of the day's Chess.com/tv episode where the issue was discussed, and a springboard for this question that remains relatively unanswered:

1. At this age, to what extent--if at all--do these kid prodigys know and memorize openings?  

    a. Is the real secret to their rating their tactical OTB, figuring it out for themselves, play?

    b. What about for an accomplished junior in U12 training with GMs?  How deep is the opening prep, knowledge of varied openings, and ability to say "hey, that's a Chigorin defense"

The second question is the question posed during the episode, not an accusation.  There was a lot of discussion and questions posed about the quad.  Discuss. Or not.

Don't know how much if at all there is for chess a analogous mental function to the so called language acquisition device (which allows young children to absorb one or multiple languages automatically, as we all did).  But it would be interesting if at some point the child stops playing for a few years, if they would lose a large portion of their ability.  An adult chessmaster taking a 5 year break would get some rust for sure, but I can't imagine them dropping much below 1800-1900. 

If the 9 - 10 year old stopped playing for 5 years and lost a large portion of his ability, it would behave in much the same way as when a child stops using a new language and subsequently forgets how to speak it all together and possibly give some clues as to how information encoding for chess may be similar to other areas such as language.

[Quoted from OP: "Two Questions: [...] 2. 9 year old master?  Is this a B.S. rigged set of games by the local club tourney director?  Suspicious abounded based on the point jumps this kid had."]

The OP did not clearly state that the questions were quoted from the episode. I read them as your questions, posed here after watching. In retrospect, perhaps the boldfaced sentence above did give some hint, but if you're quoting, then it is your responsibility to make it clear. BTW, is this episode (or at least the chat) archived and accessible anywhere?

In any case, a question implying that John Donaldson (the Chief TD for the MI Quad and for the earlier tournament) might be rigging games is beyond outrageous.

Estragon and robinsins already addressed the ridiculous premise of "point jumps." As the last tournament (26-point gain) shows, there was nothing unusual in the ones recorded last month.

Interesting question. Here's one data point: IM Steven Zierk -- practically stopped playing when he was about 9 or 10 years old (rated ~1500) and, picked it up 5 years later (still ~1500), and recently got his first GM norm.

One thing is sure: neural plasticity is wasted on the young ... .

Jeff Sarwer, of Searching for Bobby Fischer fame, dropped out of chess before age 10 (as I recall) yet as an adult played at least at the FM level in his re-emergence.

Watch it for yourself.   www.chess.com/tv and scroll down in the OnDemand section to find this entry: CHESSCOM ON-DEMAND: PARDON OUR BLUNDERS WED DEC 15 2010 04:08:15 PM. It was Topic #3 beginning at the 18:05 mark. 

The kid is legit.  I played in a tournament with him a about a year ago, and saw him blow a 2100 off the board using King's Indian Attack skills that I could only dream of (since KIA is my opening of choice). 

I've played a number of young, talented kids.  I believe their main strengths are as follows:

1) Calculation accuracy.  These kids just outcalculate you.  They have formal coaches, use chess engines, and can calculate much faster than us. 

2) Fearlessness.  They don't get down on themselves and don't care what your rating is.  I've seen a lot of them who have very little positional understanding...and therefore, no fear of saddling themselves with positional weaknesses as long as they think they can get some sort of dynamic play out of it. 

I agree with these two points.  I played a kid (not as strong and young as this one heh) and a few times I'm looking down on him, making poor positional choices and giving me things to play for.  But none of that mattered as the dynamics never resolved themselves into a position where it mattered.  They keep pressing the tactics (not knowing anything else) and with better calculation they come out on top.

Natural talents nearly never make good teachers... that's what makes them naturals, they don't know (or work at) what they do, they just do it.  If this kid did have any advice, without him knowing it, the advice would likely be useless at best and detrimental at worst -- I certainly wouldn't listen to it.

The guy that's gained 100 rating points a year for 8 years straight... that's the kind of advice that's useful.

Thanks for the info. I somehow missed the on-demand function the first time I looked there. 

I listened to the relevant portion twice, and have not found anything as strongly stated as your question "Is this a B.S. rigged set of games by the local club tourney director?

My recap of the major points:

1. IM Rensch started with a question whether it was ethical to organize a tournament as an opportunity to play rated games for a player nearing the master rating, and that topic recurred later as the main issue. He specifically stated "it does not mean that the games were not clean" (19:14) when comparing Nip's quad to Sevian's. While IM Pruess was very negative about the idea of specially organized tournament, the "B.S. rigged" characterization is all yours, IMO.
2. IM Pruess also had strong objections to rating points gained in G/45 games (at 21:01 and later), e.g.: "I barely understand how this is USCF-rated when you play game in 45."

Regarding 1, see Estragon's post from 19th January 2011, 12:05am ("There has NEVER been any requirement that a rated event be announced in advance"). Note also, that presenting an opportunity to play could have turned sour -- he could've lost points just as well.

Regarding 2, there is a good precedent for counting points gained in G/45 and shorter games towards the record. That precedent consists of the "ORIGINAL 4 RATED GAMES TONIGHT" tournaments dated 1998-02-19 and 1998-02-26 (Thursday nights, 4-Rounds, G/30, start at 7PM, end before midnight). Guess who gained 71 points in G/30 games, in one week, to end up at 2203 rating ... Without these points, V. Bhat's record would've lasted quite a bit longer.

I was quite disappointed hearing this speculation at 21:35: "He beat one master in the entire tournament. Maybe in his entire life." when it is trivially easy to check Sevian's statistics. As of right now, in the last 12 months he had he had 10 wins/11 draws/8 losses against masters in 2200-2300 range.

Oh well. In retrospect, that quad did not break the record anyway. The 20-player open tournament a week later (with unassailable G/120 controls) did. It would've been better if that quad did not occur.

Incidentally, note that nowadays the tournaments are re-rated if the results from earlier tournaments get submitted with a delay (this is why the post-quad ratings dropped to below 2200), so comparing Sevian's and Nakamura's records is not 100% apples-to-apples. If re-rating was done in the same manner 12 years ago, Nakamura's 11 point loss on 1998-02-22 (rated 1998-05-05) and another 8-point loss on 1998-02-22 (rated 1998-06-30) would likely delay his master title a couple of weeks.

what a thorough and honest investigation by LegoPirateSenior! Thank You. Not only it clears the issue of Samuel's record but also reveals the dishonest and malicious intent of the tv hosts to dishonor little boy's achievement.  "He beat one master in the entire tournament. Maybe in his entire life, this particular uttering by Mr.  Pruess to make his petty point and put a spin without bothering to look up  the game statistics and performance  is contemptible. So, first to apologize to Samuel are these two fellas who run this site. As mentioned,  they also go to the  great lengths to question G/45 format, which  is another cheap shot, answered by Nakamura (Lego refference)  himself.  No need to explain why the shorter time controls are harder  for the little guys to handle, these two (the hosts) will not understand it anyway. They just simply did not have that experience.

Last thing. Let's respect each other, we live in a small chess community, we play,we shake hands we care about each other. Just stop doing stupid things

chess.com rating is diffrent then the UFC rating

You revived a 2 year old topic to say this?

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