From the Chess World Rapid and Blitz Championships: 8-Year-Old Roman Shogdzhiev Amazes Chess World By Beating 5 Grandmasters
The exceptional feat of eight-year-old Roman Shogdzhiev, triumphing over five grandmasters in the World Rapid and Blitz Championships, earned him praise from his idol, GM Magnus Carlsen.
The event was held at the Silk Road Samarkand Resort in Uzbekistan. There were a couple of notable occurrences, one being a Polish competitor, GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda, refused to shake hands with Russian GM Denis Khismatullin.
Grandmaster (GM) is a title awarded by the FIDE, or Fédération Internationale des Échecs (International Chess Federation, in English). The rules are a bit complicated but basically you have to finish a tournament with a rating of 2600 or better. Grandmaster is the highest title awarded by FIDE aside from World Champion.
Roman Shogdizhiev beat a grandmaster in round 1, and then drew against grandmasters in rounds 2, and 4.
His next victim was GM Johan-Sebastian Christiansen, who told Norwegian TV: "I had never even heard of him before—maybe I should have. It's pretty crazy to be that good when you are eight years old. When I was at that age, I had barely learned the rules," he told NRK.
Shogdizhiev finished the tournament with a score of 5.5 out of 13. You get 1 point for a win, and 1/2 point for a draw. At the end of the tournament his rating was 2429. Ding Liren, the current World Chess Champion has a rating of 2780. Magnus Carlsen has a rating of 2830.
Rapid Chess, in the world of FIDE is a game where each player has more than 10 minutes but less than 60 minutes to complete all of the moves. Blitz chess is when there is a limit of 10 minutes or less per player. The time constraints for this tournament were as follows:
- RAPID: 15 minutes + 10 seconds increment per move, starting from move 1
- BLITZ: 3 minutes + 2 seconds increment per move, starting from move 1
Modern chess clocks can be programmed to handle that automatically.
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