Child Prodigy December 27, 2001

Child prodigies are a well-known phenomenon in chess. The great Capablanca learned the game at four, and was one of the strongest players in Cuba in his early teens. Samuel Reshevsky also started at four and was giving simultaneous exhibitions at six. You can see some pictures of historical and contemporary chess prodigies here:

Younger grandmasters

Who is this contemporary child prodigy?

In today's puzzle we are asking you to identify a true child prodigy, one who started playing chess at a very early age. This player, whom you can see in the following pictures, went on to become a world-class grandmaster. often to be found amongst the top ten in the world.

The pictures are fairly old and not of great quality. But they should still suffice to identify the player in question.

A lot of young players show great talent as a very early age, but after that you hear nothing more about them. It is quite remarkable when one goes to the very top, as was the case with the child prodigy shown in our historical pictures.

Here's a bit of information to make the puzzle easier: today the child prodigy is an active player who can be seen playing in numerous top GM tournaments all over the world today. He or she will be very surprised to see these old pictures on the ChessBase site.

Please make a note of the child prodigy you see in the above pictures. You will need to submit the name when you take part in our prize competition at the end of this series.

Frederic Friedel

Solution