Yet Another Prodigy: Richard Rapport
Friday, March 5, 2010 at 12:40AM I had followed the "Gotth Art Kupa" tournament due to the presence of a couple of oldish/old guys who were already big stars when I was a kid. There was Alexander Beliavsky, who is 56 years old but still sporting an outstanding 2656 rating; he won the tournament. And one of the runners-up was Lajos Portisch, who is 72 years old, still as high as 2519, and the tournament runner-up - defeating Beliavsky in the process, and with an interesting new opening idea!
Yet it was the other runner-up who has now caught my eye, Richard Rapport. This Hungarian IM made his final GM norm in the tournament, and did so at the ripe old age of 13. Interestingly, he's a student of Beliavsky's, so it was a doubly great event for the Slovenian GM. Anyway, it looks like there's yet another name to watch out for in the years to come.
More details here.
Rapport
Reader Comments (3)
The other lads are Illya Nyzhnyk (b1996) and Jorge Cori (b1995), to keep an eye to.
I've known about Nyzhnyk for over a year now, and mentioned him a couple of times on this blog's predecessor. It's not as if he's not a great prospect, but I'm a bit surprised he hasn't yet gotten the title. Perhaps we're taking prodigies a little too much for granted.
There may be three reasons why Nyzhnyk isn't yet a GM:
- He was a bit unlucky. At the 2008 Ukrainian Championship, he fell just a little bit short (TPR 2594). At the Staufer Open in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany in January this year he had a GM performance (TPR 2617) which apparently doesn't count as a GM norm, not enough opponents from different federations?
- Becoming GM as quickly as possible may not be his highest priority. Else he might have played "tailored and dedicated events" such as First Saturday!?
- maybe lack of support in Ukraine, something others have also complained about .... GM elect Rapport obtained all of his norms in his home country Hungary.
In any case, IM Nyzhnyk (ELO 2544) is probably not weaker than GM-to-be Rapport (2486, but gaining 23 points from his latest event to cross 2500). Whether either of them is a future Carlsen, time will tell.