How old were you when you won your first tournament?

I was seven years old.

Did you play high school chess?

No I didn't play high school chess, because by that time I was already being home schooled. So I was competing in individual tournaments all over the world.

At what age were you pulled from the traditional classroom?

At nine years old, after fourth grade. Primarily it was to give me the opportunity to compete abroad because if I stayed in regular school I would not have been able to get the excused absences to compete in enough events to progress my career.

For example one tournament is roughly nine rounds, and most of them were serious enough that it was one round per day, so if you average that out, that's nine days potentially. You can do that once or twice during the school year, but beyond that it's just not going to work.

Any idea you'd go on to be a chess champion at that point?

I think (my parents) had some inclination that I might become a top chess player -- I was already one of the top junior players in America -- but to go from a strong junior player to world champion caliber, you really can't know that ahead of time.

They perhaps had some dreams or thoughts, but I don't think they really thought it was likely. I think they just wanted to see how far it could go.

At what age did the corner start to turn?

I think when I was 15-years-old, when I broke the record for the youngest American grandmaster. Bobby Fischer previously held the record (Nakamura was three months younger; it has been broken twice since.) Once I broke the record, I knew I would have some chances to go quite far.

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At an age where boys and girls listen to bedtime stories about horses, knights, kings and castles, seven-year-old chess prodigy Dev Shah is the king of 64 squares. Quite literally. 

Last week, the boy from Napeansea Road created history by winning the Under-7 crown at the World School Chess Championship in Juiz de Fora, Brazil.

Talk to Dev about chess, and his eyes light up. Jet-lag is not an issue. "It's fun. You have to think a lot. I have been passionate about it since I was four. I pay close attention to the starting game because if you make a mistake there, it shows as the game goes on." says the sleep-deprived Std II student who looks very much at ease in his new Brazil shirt.

What's it with chess players and memory? "He can play blindfold at seven. Chess has clearly helped him in his studies and extra-curricular activities," says the proud father. It's no surprise that the Std II student loves mathematics. "He knows cricket statistics inside out. He will tell you how much Rohit Sharma has scored."

Dev Shah, who took to the sport at four and trains at the South Mumbai Chess Academy on weekdays, enjoys cricket on the weekends. DV Ganesh, who heads the academy located in Walkeshwar, is Dev's personal coach.

"He has the passion and knack for playing a sport where one has to sit down in the front of the board and think for hours together. You know how kids his age are. They lose patience. When Dev and I sit in the living room to practise, it's just the two of us. He gets into the 'zone' every time he sees a chess board," says Ganesh, who coaches Shah five times a week. Each session — hold your breath — last four to six hours.

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The 39th World Chess Solving Championship was held during August in the charming Polish town of Ostroda, situated roughly halfway between Warsaw and Gdansk.

The lakeside Hotel Willa Port provided a very comfortable environment for the solving and the Polish organising team of Piotr Murdzia, Aleksander Mista and Grzegorz Mista did an excellent job of ensuring that the whole event ran smoothly. The Polish team, having previously won six times in a row, were clear favourites to take the title for the seventh time, and it remained to be seen if any other country could offer resistance to the Polish juggernaut. The individual title was being defended by Kacper Piorun, who in 2014 had narrowly edged out his compatriot Piotr Murdzia to seize first place.

The format of the event has remained the same for many years, and consists of six solving sessions spread over two days. Each session is devoted to a different type of problem, and the event always kicks off with three mates in two. The chosen problems, this year selected by Axel Steinbrink, are kept a closely guarded secret until they are handed out to the competitors and solved under ‘school exam’ conditions.

Here is one of the mates in two. If you would like to solve it under competition conditions, allow yourself seven minutes to find the solution (solutions to all problems will be given in the second part of the article).

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Shayanna, 12, and 10-year-old Venetia Sivarajasingam will travel to Greece after their success at the British Championships

Two chess prodigy sisters from Cardiff have taken on the rest of Britain – and proved they are the queens of the board game.

Venetia Sivarajasingam recorded a perfect score to win the overall crown in her age category at the British Championships, which concluded last weekend.

It is a title which has only been won by a girl on a handful of previous occasions.

Her elder sister Shayanna, who also won the under-12s title at the Commonwealth Chess Championship in Glasgow last year, was crowned the British girls under-13s champion.

Venetia, 10, said she was pleased at her success.

“I always try to think positively and say I will try my best, and sometimes it happens,” she said.

“I felt quite nervous but also quite excited before the competition. When I won I felt really proud of myself and happy.”

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Most people like to believe that chess is played by sight, which does play an important role as it enables us to see the board. Most of us take our eyes’ role for granted while playing the game. This is not true however. Chess is a game of vision. Algorithms is a sport documentary that tells the story of the little known, nevertheless thriving world of blind chess in India. 

“Basically there is no other sport except for chess wherein visually impaired can compete on an equal footing with the sighted,” Darpan says. “Other games like cricket, soccer, etc. are played by the ones without sight as well, but they are always visually impaired vs. visually impaired games. We cannot play football or similar sports with the sighted players in its originality. Chess is the only sport which allows me to compete at par with the sighted.”

This documentary also shows the significance of ‘touch’ – it says that the modern materialistic society has forgotten its value. Dutch GM Jan Donner once said that, “in the split second you touch the piece, you’ll see more than you saw in the past 30 minutes you spent studying the position.” The unsighted chess players rely on their ‘touch’ to feel their way forward.

Alternatively, as his mentor Charudatta Jadhav always says: “Four moves in and we are all blind”. He is right, isn’t he? Four moves into a position, a sighted is on par with the non-sighted.

These young men clearly know the role chess has played in their lives. Darpan says, “Chess has helped me a lot as it is a very practical game. It is about life – and in life, just as in chess, it boils down to how you strategize and what do you envision for yourself in times to come. Therefore, I think chess has contributed a lot to my decision-making abilities. Besides, it has taught me to stay calm in the most panicky of situations and think in a clear way. In addition, chess has given me a lot of exposure to the world, which I guess would not have been possible, had it been alone for studies, and if chess weren't there in my life”.

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Sometimes life makes it easy by making it clear to a person where their biggest talent lies, and sometimes it does not. Imagine being gifted with skills to compete in artistic gymnastics meets, musical talent to aspire to be an artist, or chess, and no doubt others that were never explored. Here is a portrait of the lovely multi-talented prodigy from Kazakhstan.

At the recent Karposh Open I met a young, pretty, dark-haired girl, with a long plate reaching below the waist, Kazakh style. WGM Dinara Saduakassova had won the Best Woman Prize at the tournament at which no fewer than 98 titled players had partaken. Soft spoken, sweet and serious at the same time, Dinara has an effortless manner to win you over.   

Dinara started playing chess when she was five. She would win many local and national competitions already by the the age of ten. By the time she was fourteen, her successes reached world proportions: In 2010 she was the world champion among girls under-14, having won with 9.0/11. In 2014 she won the under-18 World Youth Championship for girls, with a dominant 10.0/11.

Dinara is under her mother’s constant vigil. A medical biologist by profession, Mrs. Oral Utesheva has played a decisive role in the shaping of Dinara’s career. Noticing her daughter’s many creative gifts, she supported her in several endeavours while Dinara was a young school pupil. Her idea was to give Dinara free rope to taste various disciplines until they discover where the multi-talented girl especially excels. Mrs Utesheva thought that a particular ’profession’ would discern itself following Dinara’s development and results. For a while, it was difficult to make a choice as the gifted and disciplined girl would show excellent results wherever she would put her foot in.

Dinara had a spell as a gymnast and as a pianist, two creative activities that predominated over the others in her early years. As a gymnast, she participated in international competitions in artistic gymnastics. As a pianist, following a rigid musical education and piano practice, she mastered some difficult numbers in the classical repertoire. Mozart, Haydn and Schumann are her favourites, but she also played some pieces of the Kazakh national repertoire and was eager to try her hand at the complex piano inventions by Bach.

As of 2010, Dinara abandoned her regular schooling in order to dedicate herself fully to the game of chess, continuing her education through home study. It is surprising to hear that she has achieved such amazing success working predominantly on her own; but she intimated that she is looking for a coach.

Today, she is a professional chess player with a clear goal: to become a woman World Champion! She is convinced that her dream is a realistic expectation. ’I have enough time to achieve this.’ Her belief and determination are contagious. I could wish for nothing more than this ’modest’ desire to become a reality.

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John is a young American player, born in 2001, thus younger than Sevian even, who gained a staggering 280 Elo to leap from 2258 Elo to .... 2538 Elo in a single bound. He was not even a FIDE master yet. This places him within 15 Elo of Samuel Sevian, the hitherto owner of the US spotlight, and six Elo behind Jeffery Xiong.

Before dismissing this as just one of the oddities that crop up with the K-factor at 40, the actual results that made this rating possible need to be acknowledged. This was not achieved by playing some unknown tournament scoring massively against lower-rated players. This was achieved playing the DC International, the World Open, and the New York International (won by Gata Kamsky). In those three tournaments he faced 13 international masters, scoring 8.0/13, and five grandmasters against whom he scored 3.0/5. His performance was consistent in all three events.

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