Magnus Carlsen, 19, tops world chess rankings

[rpm]

Norway's Magnus Carlsen has become the youngest person ever to top the world ranking in chess.

The 19-year-old was listed as number one in the World Chess Federation's January statistics with a rating of 2,810.

The Norwegian Chess Federation Monday said Carlsen is the youngest person to hold the title since ratings were introduced in 1971.

General Secretary Dag Danielsen said the previous youngest was chess legend Garry Kasparov, who first reached number one aged 20.

The Russian grandmaster has been coaching Carlsen and in his blog the teenager thanked Carlsen for helping him reach the top.

Carlsen has competed in chess since childhood and became a grandmaster at 13. He tops the rankings ahead of Bulgaria's Veselin Topalov and Viswanathan Anand of India.

 

[Morgoth]

bloody insane, the problem with chess in Africa is that we are taught at a much older age and have a bigger gap.

In russia for example they teach children about the board, all the triangles and sqaures, once he is about 8 years old then he is taught how to move the pieces. They are miles ahead of SA where the top rating is around 2200,

 

[rpm]

Hi Morgoth

There is just no depth in Africa when it comes to chess. I remember very talented young players like Daniel Cawdery who at the age of 12 was winning senior open tournaments, but SA does not have the depth to take them to the next level. They really have to go overseas early on if they ever want to reach GM levels.

But take nothing away from Carlsen - he continued to work hard and won a few strong tournaments. And it can not hurt to be coached by Gary Kasparov

 

[Morgoth]

well I remember reading Kaparov's autobiography a few years ago when I was playing chess, he actually prefered to be coached by someone with a rating of 900 (to give you an idea, my rating as an average 14 y/o was around 1400).

The problem is you need a lot of money to play chess in SA and the school system is useless, at most you might have 1-2 players per school that are decent (unless they are bought the whole Gauteng-North team like Waterkloof did). It costs about R120-180 to enter a tournament and most of the time only the top 3 people get prise money of about R2000, in a pool of 80-200 players its quiet hard to make a living out of chess.

I for one would support the government implementing chess into the school system, it will solve our math problem a lot. Take the Jewish and Russions for example, they are by far the leading people in the world when it comes to science and math, and they both teach their children math at a young age. So did the ancient greeks, Chinese and Indians who were the pioneers in early geometry and arithmetic.