Congradulations to Richard Rapport. Interesting that of the 24 youngest player to become a grandmaster only two became World Champions - Fischer and Ponomaryov while Leko only tied his match. Look who is missing from the list Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Topalov, and Anand.
True, Larry - but only so many people get to become world champ! K, K, A and T were also very young GMs by the standards of their time, and at a time when they couldn't just hop on a plane and go to Hungary for the First Saturday tournament before starting puberty.
Dennis you address a broader point to my observation. As you note many of the people on the list were given the opportunity to get their GM at the earliest age possible. This was not aways the case until the last few decades. In regards to Karpov, Kramnik and Kasparov they did have that opportunity being part of the Soviet system where their skills were quickly identified and groom. Yet they took awhile longer to get to the GM level. So I wonder how much of that was by design by the Soviets.Were they held back abit to allow for them to mature (in respect to chess) or was the bar set so high to make GM they needed longer to get there?
They didn't take longer to get to the GM level. They took longer to get the GM title. (Kramnik, for instance, was a 2590-rated FM at 16 when Kasparov got him on the Olympic team. And he was underrated then, too, as he scored 8.5/9 and was 2690 on the next rating list.) To get the title, with very rare exceptions like national championships, you have to play in an event with foreigners. This wasn't exactly standard in the days of the USSR: they weren't invited in, and getting out wasn't much more common.
Friday, March 5, 2010 at 9:28PM
Reader Comments (6)
Just so that none of us sound like fools when he comes up in discussion- how do you pronounce his name?
Rish-arr Rap-or? Rich-ard Rap-ort? (His Wikipaedia page doesn't give a pronounciation).
Congradulations to Richard Rapport. Interesting that of the 24 youngest player to become a grandmaster only two became World Champions - Fischer and Ponomaryov while Leko only tied his match. Look who is missing from the list Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Topalov, and Anand.
True, Larry - but only so many people get to become world champ! K, K, A and T were also very young GMs by the standards of their time, and at a time when they couldn't just hop on a plane and go to Hungary for the First Saturday tournament before starting puberty.
Nick,
Good question. I wouldn't think the former, unless he emigrated from France, but maybe a Hungarian reader can let us know.
Dennis you address a broader point to my observation. As you note many of the people on the list were given the opportunity to get their GM at the earliest age possible. This was not aways the case until the last few decades. In regards to Karpov, Kramnik and Kasparov they did have that opportunity being part of the Soviet system where their skills were quickly identified and groom. Yet they took awhile longer to get to the GM level. So I wonder how much of that was by design by the Soviets.Were they held back abit to allow for them to mature (in respect to chess) or was the bar set so high to make GM they needed longer to get there?
They didn't take longer to get to the GM level. They took longer to get the GM title. (Kramnik, for instance, was a 2590-rated FM at 16 when Kasparov got him on the Olympic team. And he was underrated then, too, as he scored 8.5/9 and was 2690 on the next rating list.) To get the title, with very rare exceptions like national championships, you have to play in an event with foreigners. This wasn't exactly standard in the days of the USSR: they weren't invited in, and getting out wasn't much more common.