Hi all, I stumbled across this forum in a thread wondering where the young prodigy Jeff Sarwer had disappeared to. He was the kid who was represented by Jonathan Poe in the Searching for Bobby Fischer film.

Well, as an avid poker player I can tell you he is now beginning to play poker professionally and is making quite a stir on the poker scene after only playing for a very short time. In the last couple of months he has made several deep runs in the European Poker Tour and has won over $200k. Given the similarities between chess and poker (and there are many) he has attracted the attention of some of the worlds best players and those who have met him recently have no doubt that within 6 months to a year he will be a force on the poker circuit.

You can see an interview with him here: http://tv.pokernews.com/EPT+Warsaw+2009%3A+Jeffrey+Sarwer/46048461001

There is a thread where we have been discussing him on twoplustwo a poker forum here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/jeff-sarwer-chess-prodigy-maybe-new-poker-prodigy-639004/

The 13th post down is from a guy called 'shaundeeb' who is widely regarded to be the best online tournament poker player in the world. He has recently taken a break from poker and he alludes to meeting Jeff as one of the reasons why as he knows that he could never be able to think on his level.

The topic of discussion obviously quickly moved to an argument about which was harder, more complex etc but I feel the most interesting thing is the way in which many of the skills that make chess players so good are transferable and vice versa, to the extent that several pro players on the site are at grandmaster level.

Thought you guys would find it interesting.

http://tv.pokernews.com/EPT+Vilamoura+2009%3A+Jeff+Sarwer/51724066001

another interview where he speaks about the chess/poker relationship

Jeff was found a while back... Read his comments to the game against Waitzkin here:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1473029&kpage=2

he always was a genius, would be top class in anything he pursued

yes, he always has been a genius.

I found an interesting article about him and Searching For Bobby Fischer, I believe  it's worth reading:

http://www.jeffsarwer.net/