
8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship - MKais
https://www.chess.com/news/view/8-year-old-refugee-wins-new-york-state-championship
======
mindgam3
As someone who had the unfortunate label of “prodigy” applied to me in my
youth (chess master at age 10), I’d like to offer a perspective.

It almost goes without saying, but huge respect to the kid for being able to
persevere through massive adversity and achieve such a result. What I want to
suggest without hopefully ruining the “feel good” party is that the adversity
and the success here aren’t just a striking coincidence but are in fact two
sides of the same coin. This kid is winning not (just) due to his natural
talents, but because he is more motivated than the other kids. His opponents
are playing to win a cool trophy and impress their parents. He is playing for
a chance to have a future.

I say this because I had the same drive to win in the early days, although not
for the exact same reasons. I wasn’t homeless, but my success at chess
competitions was directly linked to the emotional stability of my home
environment, which cycled between dysfunctional and abusive. When I won
tournaments, my mother showed me love and affection for a period of time
afterwards. When I lost, it was bad. As a kid, you learn pretty quickly to dig
deep and do what it takes.

I know a fair amount of chess prodigies from back in the day, including some
who are still active and top players on the professional circuit. To this day
I have not met a single one who didn’t have to deal with major adversity
during childhood - broken home, missing or abusive/alcoholic parent, etc.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t bring kids into competitive chess, or
celebrate their accomplishments. I have always loved the game, and still do,
despite its relationship to my massively dysfunctional childhood. But I think
we need to look deeper into the dark side of competitive scholastic chess
culture, most of which comes from misguided parents who view their kids’
success as an extension of their own. We should reward things like integrity
and sportsmanship in addition to raw intellectual performance.

For this refugee kid, I hope his gift brings him joy and success, even if he
doesn’t go all the way to become the youngest grandmaster. And I hope his
story will inspire a conversation about values in the larger competitive chess
community.

~~~
abetterday
I recently read Searching for Bobby Fisher and Joshua Waitzkin's childhood
seemed intense, but not broken. Would you consider him an exception or is that
level of intensity itself dysfunctional in your view?

I do agree that integrity and sportsmanship - along with the game's beauty -
should be placed higher than defeating opponents and that it often isn't. At
some point this may just be the nature of competing at the highest levels, but
early scholastic chess shouldn't be that point.

Perhaps part of it is cultural. I grew up playing in Russia as a kid (I showed
promise, but didn't go nearly as far as you). Chess was deeply woven into the
culture and into my family. I have warm memories of an inspiring game that
only encouraged development of integrity and perseverance. I've been hoping my
child gets into it. He did, but watching chess in the U.S. leaves me cold.
Obsession with ratings, winning, trophies, pragmatism, and plain cheating at
ages when these kids should be imagining themselves as honorable warriors is
disheartening. I try to guide him through it - and point out the exceptions -
but it always feels like swimming against the tide.

~~~
paulcole
Don’t forget that Searching for Bobby Fisher was written by Waitzkin’s father
and almost certainly is bending the reality to the story he wants to
tell/image he wants to project.

~~~
ramblerman
'The art of learning' is written by Josh himself and didn't leave me with an
abusive childhood impression.

Josh seems very balanced, it's a great book as well, highly recommended.

------
40acres
I read this kid's story in the times and as a native of NYC it just helped to
strengthen my conviction that NYC, despite all of its problems, is truly a
microcosm of what makes America great.

I was a latch-key kid growing up and can clearly remember hopping on the train
after class (with my free student pass) to Manhattan and killing some time at
some of the best museums in the world (also free for students) and being
exposed to so much.

We must continue to invest in our kids and in social infrastructure like
transportation and libraries to spark the next generation.

Kudos to this kid, I just really hope he can make it through. There is
unfortunately a huge disparity in what we can expect him to achieve because of
his circumstances.

~~~
mav3rick
The best part is that is they uplifting one youth is exponential they help
their family and they in turn help their children / siblings. This is how
class mobility happens. Thanks for such a positive comment.

------
hirundo
I got whooped by a 10 year old girl in a local tournament. And I didn't make
any gruesome mistakes, she just out thunk me. Of course it was one of the last
games of the day, so there was a big crowd around the board.

Kids like these should be kept to their own age class ... to protect the
fragile egos of patzers like me.

------
abetterday
You can find Top 100 lists at
[http://www.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Item...](http://www.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Itemid,371/)
and his play history at
[http://www.uschess.org/msa/MbrDtlMain.php?16649696](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 reference, Magnus Carlson played since 5 (though not too enthusiastically)
and was ~900 at age 9. But he was a 1900 a year later.

~~~
radiator
Who is Magnus Carlson?

~~~
frutiger
Typos or not, in a Chess thread, there should be enough context to recognize
who is widely regarded as the greatest chess player to have ever lived.

------
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.

~~~
simen
Fischer won the US championship for adults at the age of 14. He then went on
to become the youngest candidate for the world championship in history at the
age of 15 - a distinction he still holds.

------
Dangeranger
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
died in cotton fields and sweatshops." \- Stephen Jay Gould

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess-
cham...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess-
champion-8-year-old-homeless-refugee-.html)

~~~
tudelo
> #27 in America for eight-year-olds

The granularity of this ranking is interesting.

~~~
benatkin
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

~~~
dlandis
What (if anything) stops people from cheating in online tournaments (by simply
asking a computer for the best next move, given the current board
arrangement)?

~~~
bluGill
After game analysis. When someone picks the computer best most from a position
you can ask how likely it is they came up with that on their own. Expert chess
players recognize computer moves fairly accurately in a lot of situations
(this is easy to test, just take a bunch of positions, show the last move and
ask if it was human or computer). From there human judges look at the game and
decide how likely it is someone cheated.

Of course if you only cheat once you get away with it as nobody will be sure.
However cheating once isn't enough to change a game - in fact it will probably
change it for the worse on your side (without knowing what the computer
intended you follow a bad line after the otherwise good move). Thus you can
look at a series of games and concluded if the player cheated or not. From
there you take after the fact adjustments which mostly means recalculate
everyone's score as if those games didn't happen.

Interestingly enough, chess masters generally will score alpha zero moves as
human not computers. It will be interesting to see how online cheating
progresses once better AI based chess computers become available.

~~~
dlandis
I see, that’s interesting. Although I also wonder if players cheat in other,
more subtle, ways such as to just prevent blunders; not necessarily to choose
the best moves.

~~~
omegaham
Yes, they do.

The result is that time controls have shortened accordingly. It's a lot harder
to cheat convincingly when you're playing bullet chess, whereas it might be
easier to do so when you're playing 10 or 15-minute time controls.

------
diego_moita
NYT's Nicholas Kristof (the first to tell the story) announced a GoFundMe
campaign to help Tani's family: [https://www.gofundme.com/just-
tani](https://www.gofundme.com/just-tani)

~~~
fernandopj
A very successful one: currently at $193,339 of $50,000 goal, in 4 days.

------
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.)

~~~
johnchristopher
> 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 ?

~~~
Jill_the_Pill
The counter-argument goes like this:

Prudent or not, the deed is done; the child is here now and has real needs
now. Get over punishing the child for being born and do the right thing.

~~~
malvosenior
The counter-counter argument is that not giving someone your money isn't
"punishing" them, it's just retaining consent over your finances which
everyone should have a right to do, without shame.

~~~
macintux
How much of "your" money is an indirect result of previous generations'
sacrifice so that you can have a better life?

~~~
malvosenior
I don't think previous generations were particularly altruistic toward the
poor. In general people "sacrifice" for their family or themselves, not for
others.

------
vr46
As they say, talent is evenly distributed and opportunity is not. Good on the
little fella.

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

~~~
yathern
Evenly distributed not in the sense that everyone has an equal amount, but
that every way you can cut up demographics (age, race, sex, nationality) will
have the same bell curve of talent. But that is not necessarily so with
opportunity.

~~~
WillPostForFood
No offense, but it seems preposterous to suggest the talent distribution
within any demographic category is uneven, but if you compare two demographic
categories, they are the same. Take a look at the top marathon runners, and
tell me that the long distance running talent is distributed equally in
Bolivia and Kenya.

~~~
yathern
Well that's more of a question on what defines "talent" \- and if such a thing
exists. Genetic predisposition certainly is a thing in sports, and genetics
and ethnicity are obviously closely related.

The context we we're talking about was specifically taken in terms of
intelligence. Or "potential". If you want to make the argument that
intelligence potential is affected by your ethnicity, you are free to do so,
though I doubt such ideas will be well received :)

This idea of talent being equally distributed may not be factually accurate.
But it's something I'd prefer to believe regardless and be wrong about.

~~~
iguy
> But it's something I'd prefer to believe regardless and be wrong about.

This is fine so long as you are judicious about what actions follow from such
beliefs. If it motivates you to seek opportunity and encouragement for all,
that is wonderful. If it motivates others to run witch-hunts in against fairly
meritocratic organisations whose makeup stubbornly refuses to conform to their
beliefs, that is less than wonderful.

~~~
yathern
> it motivates others to run witch-hunts in against fairly meritocratic
> organisations whose makeup stubbornly refuses to conform to their beliefs

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. Can you give a specific
example of a witch-hunt like this?

I imagine you're talking about something where (for low-stakes example) a
video game competition is typically dominated by 20 year old white males.
Someone stirs the boat and tries to make changes so that 50 year old hispanic
women place better, despite worse objective performance.

Obviously that would not be a great thing to do! However, let's not assume the
makeup of meritocratic organisations is always as fair as we think.

In the video game example, the inconsistency with the makeup is not
necessarily because 20 year old males are, by nature since birth, better at
video games. But for mostly social reasons, having had more exposure.

------
MKais
NYT Article [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess-
cham...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/chess-
champion-8-year-old-homeless-refugee-.html)

------
Cyph0n
Imagine the potential this kid has if he was able to achieve this while his
family was homeless... I am both impressed and jealous!

~~~
koolba
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.

~~~
PhilWright
Ah, apparently you have met my son and all his friends. Getting any of them to
be passionate about anything but YouTube and PlayStations seems all but
impossible.

------
Causality1
Title is very misleading as it implies he was competing against adults. "8
year old refugee better than any other 8 year old" is a far less interesting
story than the implied chess prodigy.

~~~
hazz99
I don't think so - if I read about an 8 year old winning a tennis
championship, I'd assume they're playing with other kids.

The interesting and impressive part comes not only from the achievement itself
(winning the championship) but doing it despite their situation and past
(refugee, homelessness, etc)

~~~
Causality1
Tennis is a physical sport where it would be virtually impossible for a
preteen to beat an adult. Chess is an intellectual exercise.

~~~
hazz99
Still, I don't think the title is misleading. If he was playing against
adults, I'd explicitly include that in the title because it's majorly
impressive.

------
simonebrunozzi
Title should say "New York State Chess Championship".

------
bufferoverflow
In his age category.

~~~
noir_lord
He's 27th in the country out of his age range and he's up against a lot of
kids with every advantage in life.

That's damn impressive any way you cut it, just under 1587USCF meaning he's
playing at about the grade of an average active adult chess player (and far
beyond an average player)...at 8 after a year living in pretty grim life
circumstances.

Little dude is inspiring.

~~~
bluGill
At 9 years old most kids have not been playing long. It wouldn't surprise me
if he studied more hours than everyone else in his class (homeless implies no
other toys to play with) which begs the question why are the other 26 better
than him with less study. Note that wouldn't surprise me doesn't mean much - I
have no clue how much study he does.

~~~
emiliobumachar
Studying more then the other competitors is definitely to one's credit,
arguably more so then any innate talent.

------
abetterday
I am curious how they funded the tournament play. It tends to cost about
$10/rated game.

~~~
bluGill
Most tournament directors are nice people and will find an exception or
sponsor for someone who is really poor to afford the fees.

Anyone who is good gets noticed quickly in the chess world. There are rich
people in chess who will sponsor kids. All great kids in the US will get a
free chess coach to get them better (I'm not sure how great you need to be to
get this). Many other countries have similar chess sponsors.

If you read the article you will see that his school chess club waived their
normal fees and even found him a coach (before he would qualify on the
national level)

------
freyr
Wouldn't hurt to put chess in the title.

~~~
lrdd
(www.chess.com)

------
python_gt_r
This story radically changes my world views. Eye opener.

------
_bxg1
But no, let's keep making it harder to get a Visa.

~~~
devmunchies
this is news _because_ of how rare it is. its a classic underdog story.

~~~
atomi
Yeah. It's rare in every category you put people in whether it's nationality,
ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or whatever.

------
internet_user
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.

~~~
systemspeed
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.

~~~
patates
Out of curiosity, when would you consider chess, or any game of similar
complexity for that matter, "solved"?

~~~
azeotropic
When it's possible to predict the winner from an arbitrary board position,
given optimal play by both players. Checkers, for example, is solved. Chess
and Go are not (even though computers can outperform human players).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game)

------
rurban
He only won his age group (K-3), for kids at his age. And there were kids with
a rating of 1400-1700 already. Everybody knows that young immigrants play much
stronger chess than US kids. So not really newsworthy at all. It would have
been if he would have won the real New York State Championship, such as the
young Japanese boy Harimoto who beat all the world champions right and left
aged when he was still 15. (table tennis). Also an immigrant (from China). In
a much harsher and openly racist society.

------
narrator
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.

~~~
BoorishBears
What the hell is this supposed to be?

~~~
rosser
It's _supposed_ to be clever, I imagine.

It just comes across as churlish, though.

EDIT: Even the fact that the comment was edited from some stupid pseudocode,
into something that cries "wrongthink" plays thusly...

~~~
narrator
My definition of "wrongthink" is suggesting that facts support confirmation of
a narrative, regardless of what the facts are, when that narrative has become
socially unacceptable. For example, in Chinese society, to suggest that
religious minorities are being mistreated by the government is "wrongthink"
regardless of what the facts are.

If this kid had been from a Uyghur family in China and his father had been
killed in a Chinese internment camp it would not be "wrongthink" for a western
newspaper to say "8-year old fleeing from religious oppression in China wins
New York State Championship", though it would be "wrongthink" to print this in
a Chinese newspaper or even an Indonesian newspaper. A presidential candidate
in Indonesia recently declined to comment on China's mistreatment of muslims
for example.

~~~
rosser
That's fine. I even agree with that definition.

The thing is, literally _none_ of the words you used in your pseudocode are
"wrongthink" _here_.

This was straight-up, "person says awful thing, catches flak, and cries
oppression."

EDIT: That's not oppression. It's disapproval.

~~~
narrator
An awful thing can be a socially unacceptable narrative regardless of what the
facts are.

