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8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

chess.com

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Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#11

Post by birken »

tudelo wrote: post #8
Dangeranger wrote: post #5

A year after learning to play chess he has a USCF rating of 1473 and is #27 in America for eight-year-olds. Tani participated in the New York State Championship. He won the category for children of his age, kindergarten to third grade, with five wins and one draw[0]. "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and…

> #27 in America for eight-year-olds The granularity of this ranking is interesting.

Well the USCF knows your exact USCF rating and your birth date, so it is very easy for them to make these lists. Though they should be taken with a grain of salt because, especially for young players who are improving quickly, their rating is very likely a lagging indicator of their current skill.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#12

Post by koolba »

Cyph0n wrote: post #6

Imagine the potential this kid has if he was able to achieve this while his family was homeless... I am both impressed and jealous!

Flipping it around, imagine he grew up in a stereotypical middle class suburb and, instead of pursuing chess, he spent his idle time watching YouTube videos of influencers unboxing toys on his iPhone.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#13

Post by joe_the_user »

He won the State Championship for children in his age category. If he had won New York State Championship for all ages, he would have been indescribably far advanced.

I think Bobby Fisher won the NY State Championship at age 19 - New York holds many of the strongest US players, naturally.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#15

Post by sshagent »

koolba wrote: post #12
Cyph0n wrote: post #6

Imagine the potential this kid has if he was able to achieve this while his family was homeless... I am both impressed and jealous!

Flipping it around, imagine he grew up in a stereotypical middle class suburb and, instead of pursuing chess, he spent his idle time watching YouTube videos of influencers unboxing toys on his iPhone.

Nicely put.

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#16

Post by benatkin »

tudelo wrote: post #8
Dangeranger wrote: post #5

A year after learning to play chess he has a USCF rating of 1473 and is #27 in America for eight-year-olds. Tani participated in the New York State Championship. He won the category for children of his age, kindergarten to third grade, with five wins and one draw[0]. "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and…

> #27 in America for eight-year-olds The granularity of this ranking is interesting.

I disagree. This isn't a contrived category, which is common in tournaments, to make them interesting. On chess.com and Lichess there are chess tournaments that are restricted to people with lower than, say, a 1500 rating. If a 1700 chess player plays worse on purpose to get the score down, that's called sandbagging. There is little room for sandbagging here. People can't just change their ages, or up and move to the US. There are age ratings and regional divisions in different sports, and it both makes things more fair and opens up more opportunity to compete.

This is a significant achievement and the boy is undeniably an elite chess player.

Edit: s/soundbagging/sandbagging/g

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#18

Post by BoorishBears »

narrator wrote: post #10

Edit: Yay for the kid. He's awesome. I was trying to be clever about demonstrating how the journalist's selection among alternatives narratives influence our perception of reality, but it was too much wrongthink.

What the hell is this supposed to be?

Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship

#19

Post by SolaceQuantum »

How can we, as a society, support our future during its most vulnerable time (childhood)? How is it possible that we still have homeless children in a country with so much wealth?

(I'm seriously asking. I want to know how many other similarly bright minds aren't being supported to their full potential due to circumstances not their fault, and what public administrative techniques have been proven to work or not work and why.)

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