Xue Haowen, 16
This year Hastings, “the grandfather of international chess tournaments,” was won by Xue Haowen [photo Prashila Chauhan], who began the tournament without any FIDE titles. But his 2502 rating and his strong track record show that he is already en route to becoming one of China’s leading players. In Hastings he fulfilled his third and final GM norm, playing a spectacular rook sacrifice in round seven. Xue Haowen is the first male grandmaster from Shenzhen, the university city where the all-time No 2 woman, Hou Yifan, now lectures on chess. Hou spent a year studying at Oxford, while Xue plans to take the Cambridge international entrance exam next term.
Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, 14
The young Turkish player [photo Michal Walusza/FIDE] won a spectacular game in the $625,000 Grand Swiss in Samarkand. Playing black, Erdogmus allowed two white queens on the board, then sacrificed the black queen for a pawn, followed by checkmate by a previously unmoved black pawn. “It was even more brilliant than Bobby Fischer’s 1956 ‘Game of the Century’ against Donald Byrne,” writes Barden. Here is a vivid video description of the game by Sagar Shah of ChessBase India. Magnus Carlsen paid Erdogmus a huge compliment: “Erdogmus is really, really good, at almost unprecedented levels at that age.”
Kai Hanache, 13
This schoolboy beat [pictured at last year’s British Rapidplay Championship in Peterborough by Alain Hanache], defeated three grandmasters and three international masters, and also set a rating record at the 15-round UK Blitz qualifier. His rating at the start was a modest 2037, but one of the GMs he beat was British Championship runner-up Stuart Conquest. Kai’s tournament performance of 2448 reached International Master standard.
Faustino Oro, 11
Barden tells us how the “chess Messi” from Argentina, set new world records for his age when he won the Legends and Prodigies tournament in Madrid with an unbeaten 7.5/9, achieving his first grandmaster norm and reaching a 2509 GM rating on FIDE’s October rating list. Faustino Oro [Photo ANP/Alamyis] the first under-12 in chess player in history to be rated 2500-plus, is clearly on a path to break Abhimanyu Mishra’s world record as the youngest GM in history. He could achieve this in the next four months, when he has the World Cup in Goa, the European Club Cup in Greece, and a closed tournament in Argentina lined up.
Bodhana Sivanandan, 10
The 10-year-old primary schoolgirl scored a landmark result when she achieved a FIDE women’s grandmaster performance with 4.5/9 at the Aix-en-Provence tournament in France. In doing so, Sivanandan [photo Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters] broke a historic age record set by Judit Polgar in London 1988 at age 12, and then broken by Hou Yifan, all-time women’s No 2, as an 11-year-old.
Sivanandan met a strong field, including a grandmaster and five international masters. Her fast, confident, accurate and impressive defence in a tricky pawn down rook endgame against a 2488-rated GM was captured on video by ChessBase India. Her overall performance rating for the event was 2401.
