Category: Chess Articles

The game of chess is witnessing a fascinating trend. New research by Chess.com shows that grandmasters are now achieving their titles at an earlier age than ever. Will the chess world see 10- or 11-year-olds becoming grandmasters in the next few years?

In the past year, we’ve seen a surge in children scoring extraordinary results. Records that would’ve seemed unbreakable only five to 10 years ago aren’t as shatterproof as we once thought, and it’s just a matter of time until they are broken again. “Child’s play” as some say.

Here are some examples:

• FM Faustino Oro (Argentina). Became the youngest ever 2300-rated player, at nine years and three months last year, and is the youngest ever to score an IM norm.
• WCM Bodhana Sivananandan (England). Won the World Youth Championship Girls under 8 in classical, blitz and rapid scoring 33/33, becoming England’s first youth chess champion in 25 years. She’s currently the world’s highest-ranked player under 9 years.
• Ashwath Kaushik (Singapore). Broke the record for youngest player to defeat a grandmaster in classical chess, one month after Leonid Ivanovic broke the previous record from 2012.
• Roman Shogdzhiev (Russia). Beat five grandmasters in the 2023 World Rapid & Blitz Championship.

The results appear to be a part of a new trend as shown by Chess.com research that looks at the age of players who secure the grandmaster title.

While the average age for players achieving the most prestigious title in chess was 30 between 1975-1979, it dropped to 22.8 between 2020 and 2024. The highest age for a new GM was 32.8 in 1977. More then four decades later, in 2021, the average age is down to a record low of 20.9.

10 players are currently pending approval for the GM title in 2024. The average age is down to 21.4, the second lowest to date.

Article source chess.com

The Chess Rising Stars Girls’ Online Chess Club is now into its second term. Supported by lead coach WFM Maria Manelidou, our active community of girls taking part in chess lessons continues to grow.

In its 2019 publication ‘Development of Women’s Chess – Progress Plan’, the English Chess Federation identified that “there will need to be cultural change at all levels of chess in England which will require engagement from clubs, counties, unions, schools and individual members”.

In support of this aim our club is free to enter for girls who already have chess lessons with us.

“Chess has played an important role in my life and I am keen to share that. I moved to Greece when I was a young girl but I didn’t speak any Greek. Joining the local chess club changed my life because chess has its own language. It helped me to make friends and become more confident.”

WFM Maria Manelidou – Founder at Chess Rising Stars London Academy

We are keen to promote and create opportunities for girls to play chess with us. Our Girls’ Chess Club Online is another step in this direction.

To help prepare our students to compete beyond Chess Rising Stars, we are delighted to announce our first Online Grand Prix.

You can find our free Grand Prix tournaments on our lichess team page this term. Chess Rising Stars students, parents and friends are all welcome to take part.

Each tournament will have 5 rounds of 10+5 and points will be tallied across the 6 Grand Prix events. We have chosen this time control to mimic the playing conditions in the Junior Four Nations Chess League Online (J4NCLO).

Prizes will be awarded based on the number of entries and will be confirmed at a later date. Your top 5 scores from the 6 Grand Prix events will count towards this.

The online chess tournaments will take place on the following Sundays at 4 pm (GMT) in the Spring Term 2024:

28th Jan = Warm-Up

4th Feb = Grand Prix 1

11th Feb = GP 2

25th Feb = GP 3

3rd Mar = GP 4

10th Mar = GP 5

17th Mar = GP 6

To ensure the integrity of the Chess Rising Stars Online Grand Prix tournaments are maintained, we will use the lichess cheat detection system alongside the observation and judgement of our experienced coaching team.

The Chess Rising Stars London Academy team hope to see many of you there.

Our 18th Chess Rising Stars Camp took place at Marlborough Primary School in Chelsea, London. We improved our chess skills together from Monday 23rd to Thursday 26th August 2021.
It was a delight to return to teaching chess camps in-person. Our children (and staff!) had all missed playing and learning chess together over the board.

Our camps are open to children from ages 6 to 14 and of all chess levels so beginners, intermediate and advanced children were all there with us. We split up into two classes for the activities. This helped us to match children with those of a similar level of chess experience and ensure they all made maximum progress.

Lessons had a mixture of chess tuition, mini-games and sportsmanship advice. We also made sure to find time for a break but some of our students just continued to play chess outside!
Each day we finished with several games under tournament conditions. We awarded trophies, medals, toys and certificates to our fantastic students. Particular congratulations go to Brain L., who scored 8 out of 9, and was the overall chess camp champion and Nicolas T., who scored 4.5 out of 9 and won the second group. Hector M. was our most improved player for his 5 consecutive wins to finish the tournament.

The camp was organised and delivered by WFM Maria Manelidou, CM Thomas Villiers and Chris Russell. We had a great time and our students did too.

Our next Chess Rising Stars Camp will be held in October for half-term and we hope to see you there! Please do contact us if you are interested in finding out more.

View more photos of the event