The joy of chess: ten-year-old beats IM

Ten-year-old's win against an International Master

Below is the video, which shows a game that took place between the young lad and IM Greg Shahade during a US Chess School session in LA. Normally, Greg invites 8-12 students of approximately the same age to these sessions, and this time the youngest participant was a nine-year-old who turned ten during the camp. During the break Greg played  an impromptu blitz game against the boy, whom we shall identify later in this report. Do yourself a favour and watch the video before you read on.

This video was uploaded on Dec 28, 2010 and viewed over 500,000 times. We followed the moves and give them to you on our Javascript board:

The two year old video resurfaced this week in a number of non-chess news and discussion forums:

We found it on Digg (screen shot above), and there was a huge thread on Reddit: 10-year-old beats international chess master in a blitz game... while drinking 7up. So who, you ask, is the boy who on or around his tenth birthday was able to demolish an International Master and chess trainer (who incidentally shows great sporting spirit in playing the game all the way to mate).

Samuel Sevian, born on December 26 2000, is an American chess prodigy of Armenian descent. He is from Corning, New York. On December 5, 2010, he became the youngest National Master in USCF history with a rating of 2206 at the age of 9 years, 11 months and 9 days. On December 19, 2010 Sevian broke yet another major record by becoming youngest ever National Master in the US chess history. In 2012 he completed all International Master Norms winning two Metropolitan IM and one GM Norm tournament held in Los Angeles. In January 2010 with a FIDE rating of 2119, he became the highest rated chess player in the world for his age.

Samuel became the World Champion in the U12 category in Maribor Slovenia, Nov 7-19 2012. His pre-tournament (FIDE) rating at the World Youth was 2347, almost 100 points above his nearest competitor. In May 2013 he was invited to play US Championship in Saint Louis as the youngest ever participant in the championship history. With the field consisted of 24 players Sevian was able to score 4/9, which placed him in the shared 15-th place ahead of several prominent grandmasters. Month later, in June, Samuel played in the the prestigious US Junior under 20 Championship, where he came second only half a point behind the eventual winner, he was again the youngest in the field of competitors.

U12 gold medalist Samuel Sevian at the 2012 World Youth
Championship in Maribor, with Garry Kasparov backing him up

In December 2012 Samuel completed his final IM norm, narrowly missing the GM norm by half a point. He is now an IM-elect, still listed as an FM at FIDE, with a 2388 rating.

Visit Samuel Sevian's Blog and his web site