Fabiano Caruana: This kid is for real

Could be the next big thing in chess

Just keep an eye on this 16 year old American-Italian. I'm not very good on predicting things, but if my instinct and feeling would not deceived me, we are seeing the next Vassily Ivanchuk of chess. His quick thinking, good judgment in spite of severe time trouble and wide encyclopedic knowledge of openings makes him an ideal heir to the king of blitz and rapid chess, Vassily Ivanchuk. Although he was knocked out in the quarterfinals of Cap d'Agde by former world champion and legendary grandmaster Anatoly Karpov, (winning a game against Karpov, nonetheless) he demonstrated exceptional maturity and potential to become a future world championship challenger if not a world champion himself someday. In this tournament, he defeated Bu Xiangzhi (2704) of China in round 1, Frenchman Maxime Vachier Lagrave (2716) in round 5, and drew with Vassily Ivanchuk (2786) in round 7. A bit of biography: in September 2002 at age 10, he became the youngest American (and Italian) to defeat a Grandmaster (Aleksander Wojtkiewicz) in an official tournament - surpassing the record set by Hikaru Nakamura. Caruana is currently the strongest player of Italy with FIDE rating of 2640. He won the Corus 2008 Group C tournament at age 15, ironically the same group and tournament Filipino prodigy, Wesley So is scheduled to compete early next year. So just turn 15 last October with FIDE rating of 2610. It would be an interesting comparison to see if Wesley could match what Fabiano achieved at Corus Group C tournament.

-Photo courtesy of Fabiano Caruana's Official Site