An 8-year-old chess prodigy from Singapore has become the youngest chess player to beat a grandmaster.

After a three-hour game of chess at Switzerland’s Burgdorfer Stadthaus-Open, Ashwath Kaushik — who is 8 and 6 months — beat the 37-year-old Polish grandmaster Jacek Stopa on Sunday, according to media reports.

Kaushik broke the age record set only days before, when Leonid Ivanovic from Serbia (8 years and 11 months old) beat the Bulgarian Milko Popchev, 59.

“It’s a very exciting feeling and amazing to be able to beat my first grandmaster on the board and it’s in classical [chess] so I feel very proud of myself,” said Kaushik, an Indian citizen who moved to Singapore with his family seven years ago. The spate of precocious record-breaking began a week ago on Feb. 12 in Belgrade, when Ivanovic became the first player under the age of nine to defeat a grandmaster in classical chess.

According to Chess.com, the competitive chess world “has recently been witnessing a surge in children scoring extraordinary results at an even earlier age, perhaps propelled by the pandemic and a rating system lagging behind in keeping pace with their rise in strength.”

Ivanovic reportedly scored four points after winning three games, drawing two and suffering just one defeat. That win made the boy the youngest player to defeat a grandmaster in a classical tournament game, according to Chess.com.

But that record stood for barely a week.

On Sunday Ashwath won his first three games with Stopa. But he lost his next game to the British player Harry Grieve, 23, who won the 2022 British chess championship.

Still, Ashwath’s mother Rohini Ramachandran, 37, said she was pleased with the win. “We were all really happy but he had to quickly refocus so I don’t think we had a lot of time to celebrate right after the game, but we’ll definitely do some celebration when we’re back home with the whole family,” she said.

Ashwath was 4 when his parents introduced him to the game, according to the family. Within a couple of months he was beating them and other members of the family. He now plays chess two hours each weekday, and six to seven hours a day on the weekends. “It’s really fun and it helps your brain get better and smarter because in chess you need a lot of thinking to find the best moves,” the boy said.

His parents said the biggest challenge was stopping their son from snacking on Juicy Drop candy which led to spikes and falls in energy.(SD-Agencies)

Words to Learn 相关词汇

【跟上步伐】gēnshàng bùfá keep pace with go or make progress at the same speed as

【激增】jīzēng spike an abrupt sharp increase

来自新加坡的八岁天才少年阿什瓦特•考希克击败了国际象棋特级大师，成为获得这一殊荣的最年轻棋手。

据媒体报道，经过三小时的对弈，8岁零6个月的考希克周日在瑞士布格多夫城堡公开赛上击败了37岁的波兰特级大师雅切克•斯托帕。

考希克打破了几天前创造的最小年龄棋手成功挑战特级大师纪录，当时，来自塞尔维亚的莱昂尼德•伊万诺维奇（8岁零11个月）击败了 59岁的保加利亚选手米尔科•波普切夫。

考希克是印度公民，7年前随家人移居新加坡，他说：“第一次能够在棋盘上战胜一位特级大师，而且是在古典（国际象棋）领域，我很激动，这太棒了，我替自己骄傲。”

天才少年棋手打破记录的浪潮始于一周前的2月12日；那一天在贝尔格莱德，伊万诺维奇成为第一位在古典国际象棋中击败特级大师的九岁以下棋手。

据国际象棋网站Chess.com报道，国象竞技圈“最近目睹了低龄棋手取得非凡成绩的热潮，这也许是由于受到新冠疫情的影响，以及等级分制度跟不上儿童实力提升的步伐”。

据报道，伊万诺维奇在赢得三场比赛、战平两场比赛和仅遭遇一场失利后，获得了四分。据Chess.com报道，这场胜利当时让他成为在古典锦标赛中击败特级大师的最年轻棋手。但这一纪录仅仅保持了一周。

周日，考希克在与斯托帕的前三盘棋中获胜。但他在后面的一盘棋中输给了23岁的英国棋手哈里•格里夫，格里夫是2022年英国国际象棋冠军。考希克的母亲阿什瓦特罗希尼•拉马钱德兰说她为这场胜利感到高兴。这位37岁的母亲说： “我们都特别高兴，但他必须迅速集中注意力，所以比赛结束后我们没什么时间立即庆祝，但回家后一定会和全家一起庆祝。”考希克的家人说，孩子四岁时，父母给了他国际象棋的启蒙。几个月后，他就能战胜父母和其他家庭成员。现在，他每个工作日下两个小时国际象棋，周末每天下六到七个小时。

他说：“下棋很有趣，能让你脑子更好用、更聪明，因为下国际象棋时需要大量思考来找到最佳招数。”

考希克的父母说，最大的挑战是不让孩子吃Juicy Drop果汁糖，这会导致他精力旺盛后迅速疲劳。

(Translated by Debra)