It is interesting which junior players Magnus invited to the tournament, though - besides Praggnanandhaa, there's also Andrey Esipenko, who _did_ beat Magnus in a classical game once at the prestigious Tata Steel Masters 2021, and also Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who beat Magnus late last year en route to becoming the World Rapid Champion at 17 years old. A fun group! With Vincent Keymer in the mix too, you're only really missing Nihal Sarin and (of course) Firouzja for many of the future faces of chess.
[Edit: the article says that Praggnanandhaa is the youngest player ever to beat Magnus since 2013, which would definitely be newsworthy. I think the article must be leaving out important context, since this tournament is (1) online, (2) speed chess and (3) not FIDE rated, so it typically wouldn't be included in records, and Magnus has almost certainly lost random online games to younger players before. I'm guessing the article is referencing some other source without providing the relevant criteria, which is why it looked a little weird to me.]
https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/chess/magnus-carlse...
He’s also the 6th youngest chess grandmaster ever, so it’s not like he’s a nobody, he’s a legit prodigy. Plus India has traditionally not been a strong chess nation (per capita), but has been up and coming recently, so that adds to the appeal of the story.
Not to mention, Pragg wasn't even the lowest rated player to beat Magnus in this unrated tournament. Eric Hansen is even lower rated than pragg and he beat magnus. Sure hansen is older but so what? Pragg didn't even make it out of the preliminary stage of this tournament while hansen did.
This news story reeks of advertising masquerading as news. India is a potential huge market and it seems like the chess industry paid for this news.
As someone who follows chess, this story is so forced and unbelievable. Pragg came in 11th out of 16 and didn't make it past the first stage. Why turn it into such a huge news story?
If anything, the story should be about how pragg and ding liren have to compete in the middle of the time due to their time zones. The tournament is still going on and they make a huge story out of this? Does not compute.
What does that mean?
[Edit] Thanks for the comments, in now way is this meant prejudiced and derogatory, I have worked with many excellent Indian colleagues.
The country normally associated with Chess is Russia, lately India got a huge wave of great talents like Vidit Gujrathi or Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa.
In return, I ask that you understand that your phrasing is prejudiced and derogatory.
Which is why they are in 5th place in world. https://ratings.fide.com/top_federations.phtml
Do you have something against India or Indians? That too a 16 year old Indian kid..
Hopefully that is not part of your CTO coaching..
Perhaps not for most chess aficionados, But I for one don't mind this being blasted all over the news because Indian children have not seen school for two years now and they're hooked on to worthless reality shows & soap operas on television/streaming sites/FB/Instagram/WhatsApp; If this news motivates some of them (or) their parents to direct their attention towards chess even if its just for the prospects of fame then I'm all in for it.
On another note, I like that guy and he is great talent, I followed his games live during the recent Tata Steel tournament (that was real classic chess tournament). He will need to prove himself against other such talents like Firouzja, which I think is around 18 and also very good, ando also that young Hungarian guy has a lot of promise. Hopefully they bring Magnus down soon. ;-)
to 16 year olds?
That's the news.
To be clear, Magnus is still one of the strongest, if not the strongest, players in the world at speed chess, but there's much more variability per game than in classical and at a given format (eg online 3+0, with premoves) probably he's edged out by any number of players.
And Pragg wasn't even the lowest rated player to beat Magnus this tournament! Eric Hansen, aka popular chess streamer "chessbrah", is even lower rated and also beat Magnus, which again you would not expect if Magnus were playing his usual level.
So still a great win and great accomplishment for Pragg, but a little context would have been nice in the article.
[1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/Rameshchess/status/14964993222462...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loRnvtNLv4w
p.s. warning for uninitiated: Finegold is equal parts comedy and chess teacher. (I love both parts)
I don't comprehend this quote or even the sentence Axios introduced it with. ("asked on Chess24 he'd celebrate"?) What is this saying?
> Interviewer: It must be a big day for you, beating the world champion. Will you sort of have a nice dinner, celebrate at all? Or is it just about going to bed now and get ready for day 3?
> Praggnanandhaa: I think it's about just going to bed, because I don't think I will have dinner at 2:30 in the morning.
Link with timestamp to the quoted bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QcPCeq9L14&t=224s
The tournament is scheduled in the Central European Time timezone, while Praggnanandhaa is in India Standard Time. The match in question was scheduled to start at 8:00PM CET, which is 12:30AM IST.
After reading the article I've got more confused. When this is happened? What tournament? Which game format?
Finally I've realized this is just another PR stunt / clickbait / classic media article / yellow journalism and I'm just wasting my time.
I do have one general question, not specific to him. I am just asking what other people think about such a situation. Is there a scientific method to verify the age? Because I have seen my friends reducing their age intentionally to take part in international competitions.
I know there are prodigies, and even if he is not 16 it doesn't matter to me because he beat the world champion. He deserves the accolade :)
Photogenic, media-savvy folks like Magnus or the Bortez sisters, or plenty of other examples are obviously attracting some views due to celebrity, but more people watching serious chess is just that!
Here’s an essay from last year that talks about him, his sister, and the culture of chess in Chennai.
World top 10 is a young man's game I believe but you can never discount a former Super-GM, they are still super strong.
There is a very simple explanation for that - Magnus has COVID right now.
I am not sure whether there is some research about it why is it like that? some diet/belief or some other matter?
Happy to learn more about it.
Dr Abdul Kalam is widely revered in India for his contributions to rocket propulsion, pretty sure he was good at math & physics as well.
Other sources: https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/cricket/age-fraud-i...
https://thewire.in/sport/why-age-fraud-in-indian-sports-is-s...
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-the-ho...
I understand there is a lot more polarity now , trust me this does not have a thing!. The most inspirational engineer all of us looked to was Dr. APJ. Peer groups matter
As a general answer: As far as I know, there is currently no exact scientific method to measure and determine the age of a person.
Certain techniques can give more or less rough estimates, however a precise technique that works for all age groups is tricky.
The following article is from 2014, but gives a good glance at several existing methods and directions of research.
https://www.vox.com/2014/10/20/6939271/age-test-aging-epigen...
It should be noted, that many techniques in this area are invasive, requiring blood/tissue sampling and/or exposing a person to ionizing radiation (XRays), which makes them prohibitive in many scenarios.
There was a big buzz in the chess world at the time, but it was hardly front-page material for mainstream media.
That said, of course, newsworthiness is not a competition - so congrats to both youngsters for their awesome achievements. The upcoming chess generation is looking promising! (I expect we'll see similar headlines for Alireza Firouzja someday soon)
And because of the large population, even a small percentage would still be a large number.
But individual Indians do that on their own independent will though.
There's no central authority that declares to Indians "Ooh here's a new content about India. Go go go!"
India probably have the best cricket team in the world right now and they have depth. Their second eleven might be in the top 5. They are awesome and a period of India being the top dog is a good thing for cricket. (Some friendly played, properly tense games against Pakistan would make it even better, we can't have everything).
India pop 1,380 million
NZ pop 5 million
Norway also about 5 millionIndia ranks 3rd in field hockey(men)[2]. Women's team is doing well recently too.
@screye picked per capita as a measure. @herodoturtle pointed out how good India are at cricket right now. Seemed interesting and fun to combine those especially given recent cricket results and that basically nobody lives in NZ? Sometimes following these digressions leads somewhere interesting, informative, instructive and entertaining. Not always.
New Zealand is wealthy, has more playing fields than they can use, anyone who wants to can afford to play and is welcomed - even more so if they can join in and help /us/ beat those bastards from across town for whatever value of across town is most relevant to the particular team. There's a metric fudge-tonne of old cranky bastards who want to tell you what to do to do it better, not all of them are useless either. At least that's my read as a foreigner who visited once. The proportion of New Zealanders who trace their heritage to the sub-continent is likely pretty small (wikipedia says 5%). The proportion of the New Zealand national cricket team who trace their heritage to the sub-continent is quite large in comparison (~30% depending on who is selected this week?) There was a test match recently between India and NZ where all the wickets in the match were taken by people tracing their heritage to India. Cultural tradition might have something to say about that too.
Likewise Norway is close to the richest country per capita in the world. Hard to think of anywhere you'd rather be if you were bringing up kids and in the bottom 10% of wealth & income. If your kid takes an interest in chess they are likely to be able to pursue it, is my guess (Norwegians can pipe up to say how ignorant I am if necessary). Not true everywhere in the world.
In the end what matters to perception may be the attendant fuss, as you say with commentators and organised competition, but I grew up with the Football Pyramid†, which provokes healthy distrust of such things in trying to define a sport.
† Unlike with US sports like the NFL, in England Soccer is organised in a vast sprawling hierarchy of leagues, the Pyramid, with a system for teams to be promoted from a lower league to a higher one, or contrariwise demoted to a lower league, depending on their performance each season. Anybody can start at the bottom, if they can put together a group of people to turn up and play. In principle a group of friends or colleagues could create a new side, "Speen and Dean FC", that was just ridiculously good, and get promoted every season, until after a few yeares they were playing against semi-professionals, and then facing actual professional footballers in stadiums, and then playing internationals, it's all possible. Incredibly unlikely of course, but possible. And so this emphasises that actually the game you're playing kick-about with some friends, is the exact same game somebody gets paid eyewatering sums of money to play on national TV. If it's a "serious sport" is clearly just a matter of perspective.
Hence you can't really blame Indians for getting excited about a positive news story.
I'm french and if I read any comments section of any english article about France, I'll find tons of negative comments like "cheese eating surrender monkey", "their tanks have 1 forward and 7 reverse gear" and so on. And I only speak about the comments section, the worse are article from Murdoch's empire which plainly insult us, generating tons of money along the way because it sells well.
This type of comments is also found on indian based website, and that is super strange because India and France have not been involved together, we do not share a common history which would allow the introduction of jokes making fun of one another.
Can you blame them? It's been barely 74 years since they got independence, and yet they have managed to achieve so much: satellite launches, mission to moon, Mars, stable democracy, well-run elections, booming tech sector, nukes, etc. And they still have to deal with Western media portraying them as a shitty country.
1. Joseph Dupleix - during his time, it was a tossup whether India would end up as a French or a British colony.
2. Napoleon was on close terms wiith Mysore and Tipu. [2] I recall that Tipu's rocketeers acted as consultants to Napoleon.
3. Claude Martin is a famous Frenchman who established famous schools (La Martiniere) in Calcutta, Lucknow and Lyon.
4. FWIW: a small trivia: M. Night Shyamalan's family hails from former French controlled territory in India- Mahé [4]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Fran%C3%A7ois_Dupleix
[2.] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Indian_Alliances
[3]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Martin
[4]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Night_Shyamalan
[4]
Also France does not have a history of traditionally winning in India (Carnatic Wars). That, coupled with the base level knowledge of WW2 that Indians are taught at school, means that Indians often take the stereotypical view online.
Honestly, I’ve seen people being strongly nationalist both offline and online, in the USA and Europe just as much.
I don’t there’s much connection to ethnicity, rather people are just bad at taking criticism in general.