8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by argd678 » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

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…

There’s efforts to correct the record on the Middle Ages too for this reason. The History Unplugged POD cast for example has a series on it.

Intelligence is also a function of knowledge too however, it’s not purely a trait you’re born with. So the more correct knowledge you have on how to think and approach problems the smarter you are. You can easily see this today with the different decisions people make arround the world, where the base intelligence rates are the same but the decisions people make aren’t the same quality.

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

#52

Post by kibwen » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

calvinmorrison wrote: post #42

benatkin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

*sandbagging it's a term across all sports

Including esports, where my experience with the term implies a meaning of "to intentionally disrespect your opponent by playing below your known skill level" https://www.ssbwiki.com/Sandbagging

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

#53

Post by systemspeed » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

internet_user wrote: post #17

We are post peak-chess. The interest fell sharply after Kasparov's loss to DeepBlue. I was a member of a chess club, that went from 30 tables to 5 in a span of couple of years.

Speaks to the fragility of the human mind. The human collective organism, as it were, instead of rising against the challenge from the machines, decides to shift focus elsewhere. Chess is nowhere close to being a solved game, yet we're already treating it as such.

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

#54

Post by vonmoltke » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #19

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…

It's a good question to ask, and a subject that needs to be addressed. However, I don't think the answers will matter much in this specific case because the boy and his family are refugees. That comes with its own peculiar issues (and political biases).

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

#55

Post by golemiprague » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

vr46 wrote: post #3

As they say, talent is evenly distributed and opportunity is not. Good on the little fella.

Talent is not evenly distributed, for example some groups of population has much lower average IQ than others.

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

#56

Post by jonahx » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

vr46 wrote: post #3

As they say, talent is evenly distributed and opportunity is not. Good on the little fella.

Talent is nowhere near evenly distributed. As this boy shows.

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

#57

Post by notyourday » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:43 PM UTC

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.

One thing to remember is that someone who has no official rating enters a tournament as unrated. The "does not suck in chess but isn't any good" rating is about 1500. Union Sq has a couple of Asian kids who play 1600-1700 hustlers ( with their parents watching ) and do about even with the which would make them about the same range. I'm sure they are unrated according to the US Chess Federation.

Typically one would not want to enter an official tournament as unrated player while being a low rated player as that's the only time when one can compete in a low bracket and win a purse.

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

#58

Post by cjbprime » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

abetterday wrote: post #41

You can find Top 100 lists at http://www.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Item... and his play history at http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?16649696 . It is almost precisely a year since his first tournament game so there is no exaggeration. Going to 1473 in one year is extremely impressive especially since early tournaments show loses so it isn't like he excelled but simply wasn't rated. For refe…

I remember reading that Carlsen memorized all of the world capitals aged 2, so it's not the case that there was no warning he might be exceptional player :)

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

#59

Post by Will_Parker » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

nightfly wrote: post #49

johnchristopher wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? The argument goes like this: > Because why should I care for someone else's child and why should I shell out money because someone decided to have children even though they shouldn't have ?

> Because why should I care for someone else's child and why should I shell out money because someone decided to have children even though they shouldn't have ? The worst part of this is it naturally encourages classism. Only wealthy people should have children, only wealthy people should have pets, etc.

> Only wealthy people should have children, only wealthy people should have pets, etc.

I'd be happy if we could get an equal reproduction rate across all income demographics, i.e. more children for wealthy people. As it is we seem to be inadvertently running a selective breeding program against those most capable of thriving in our society. We should stop doing that.

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

#60

Post by cjbprime » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 8:46 PM UTC

internet_user wrote: post #38

narrator wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that even grand masters get beaten by cell phone chess games these days.

Probably not that far from truth. Yet I don't see cellphone chess programs make first page, for some reason. Why is that?

I heard that cars are pretty good at distance athletics too, but no-one gives them any credit.