Chess: The mystery of prodigies

MEXICO CITY (apro).-For some reason, which is not clear to anyone, the three disciplines that produce the most geniuses are mathematics, music and chess. We define a child prodigy, a genius (potentially), as someone who at an early age masters one or more scientific or artistic fields generally undertaken by adults. Early age is usually considered to be before 10 years of age.

In mathematics there are notable cases: Leonhard Euler, Evariste Galois and Carl Gauss among others. A notable example of mathematical aptitude was Paul Erdös, (1913 – 1996), who was the only child of a Jewish couple (both mathematicians). At the age of 3 he already knew how to add and by the age of 4 he could already calculate how many seconds a person had lived. At the age of 21 he received his doctorate in mathematics and went to live in England. For Erdös, material possessions were of no importance. Prizes and other earnings were usually donated to people in need or as incentives for problems he himself proposed. He spent most of his life as a vagabond, travelling, attending various scientific conferences and houses of fellow mathematicians around the world. He would typically arrive at the door of the house where he was invited and say: my brain is open, staying long enough to produce some article(s) before travelling again. As his colleague Alfréd Rényi put it: a mathematician is a machine that turns coffee into theorems, and Erdös drank copious amounts of it. (This quote is continually attributed to Erdös, but it seems that it was actually Rényi who first used it.) The peculiar mathematician also had his own vocabulary: he spoke of The Book, an imaginary book in which God had written down the most beautiful proofs of mathematical theorems. In a lecture in 1985 he remarked: You don’t have to believe in God, but you should believe in The Book. He himself doubted the existence of God, whom he called The “Supreme Fascist” (SF) and accused of keeping the most elegant proofs from sharing. When he found a particularly beautiful mathematical proof, he would exclaim: This is one for The Book!

On the other hand, in music there are certainly many talents who from a young age demonstrated an extraordinary ability, examples that are more than obvious: Friedrich Chopin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The case of the latter (1756 – 1791) is perhaps typical. At four years old, the young Amadeus practiced the harpsichord and composed short works of considerable difficulty; at six, he played the harpsichord and the violin with skill. He could read music at first sight, had a prodigious memory and an inexhaustible capacity for improvising musical phrases. He composed his first oratorio at the age of nine. Each performance by the young Wolfgang Amadeus was an exhibition of his virtuosity with the harpsichord and the violin (it is said that at that time he could already play the keyboard blindfolded), and he left the audience amazed by improvising on any theme that was proposed to him. By 1769, Mozart had been appointed concertmaster in Salzburg – a great honour for a young man – but without pay. He was financed to travel to Italy, where Leopold believed that Wolfgang Amadeus would succeed in composing operas. Father and son arrived in Rome on 11 April 1770. At the Vatican, Wolfgang Amadeus heard Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere. This work was secret, as it could only be performed in the Sistine Chapel and its publication was forbidden under penalty of excommunication. However, as soon as the young composer arrived at the inn where he was staying, he wrote from memory a very approximate version of the complete score. Pope Clement XIV, admiring the talent of the fourteen-year-old musician, not only did not excommunicate him but named him a Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur, a title that – despite the privileges it granted – never interested Mozart.

With these examples we are not trying to stereotype the attitudes of the gifted, because it is clear that they not only had a passion, perhaps overflowing, for the discipline they were dealing with, which perhaps shows us one of the most important qualities of genius: an inextinguishable, obsessive and incessant passion for the topic being addressed.

In chess – the subject at hand – it is clear that child prodigies have always existed. Samuel Reshevsky, José Raúl Capablanca, and even Bobby Fischer are frequently mentioned examples of an ability beyond what is expected to play chess well. Not everything is similar in these players and each one could have a different story, as well as backgrounds completely unrelated to each other. However, their desire to understand and unravel the mysteries of chess seems to be a common denominator. Today there are perhaps more talented chess players who could well be classified as prodigies or geniuses. In fact, thanks to the International Chess Federation (FIDE, for its initials in French), which has regulations that reflect to a greater or lesser degree the chess strength of a player, we can easily know who has remarkable abilities from a young age. For example, the highest title in chess (apart from World Champion) is grandmaster. Many players embark on the adventure of obtaining this title, which sums up the experience, ability and chess strength of a very high level, which is achieved by very few. There are many years of chess practice, tournaments, constant work studying the science of the game, but even so, this is no guarantee of obtaining such a coveted title. However, there are already records of those who have obtained this scroll from a very young age. The following table is very significant.[1]:

Obviously, some children and young people with extraordinary talent have emerged a few years ago, such as Yuriy Kuzubov or Katerina Lahno (both now grandmasters), to mention a couple of names. There are certainly factors that have contributed to this happening. For example, in Ukraine there have been – and continue to be – many cases of very young grandmasters. Probably in that country they have found some method of teaching talents to develop their potential. Likewise, the fact of living in a globalized world, where all kinds of data are accessible through the Internet, has meant that with this explosion of information, new chess players have emerged, as if by spontaneous generation, all very young, with an extraordinary level (considering their young age).

So, here we should ask ourselves what qualities need to be considered to know if we have among us a chess genius, or at least, a child or young person with a talent that can potentially be exploited within the scientific game. The reality is that today –for parents– when they see their small children playing chess (much better than the one they themselves play), they think that they have a talent at home that is about to blossom. It may be true, although most of the time nothing happens to the little one, who develops like any normal child, without great successes or resounding triumphs in tournaments against consecrated masters.

The reality is that prodigies in the game of chess are a mystery. Faustino Oro, the 10-year-old and 8-month-old Argentine boy who has just won the title of International Master, perhaps demonstrates that human beings either overvalue the importance of experience or that it is useless (at least for playing chess well). And the questions pile up: How can a 10-year-old boy play at the level of an International Master after only 3 years of chess studies? Where does the talent to play chess so well lie? How can we understand this and apply it to everyone else, to those with “average talent”? The truth is that I don’t see any answers to these questions.

[1] Fuente: www.chessbase.com