The Kasparov Chess Foundation (KCF) and Saint Louis Chess Club have been running the very successful Young Stars – Team USA program for the past six years. Team USA’s program has helped develop several American chess prodigies from across the country. including the likes of GM Jeffery Xiong and GM Sam Sevian. Team USA has been capped off with individualized training sessions with Kasparov’s coaching staff and special training sessions with Garry Kasparov himself.
The Saint Louis Chess Club is an organization that knows no rest! The Club restarted this year their Classic tournament series – a quarterly event with two very strong Round Robins. These proved to be perfect training grounds for three of our Young Stars; it was only convenient to have a training weekend immediately afterwards to learn from the tournament. Garry Kasparov lead the session and was assisted by FIDE Senior Trainer Michael Khodarkovsky. Four very strong students were able to participate, though three of them did it in person:
- GM Jonas Bjerre
- GM Abhimanyu Mishra
- GM Christopher Yoo
Top: Michael Khodarkovsky, Jonas Bjerre, Garry Kasparov. Sitting in front: Christopher Yoo, Abhimanyu Mishra. Photo Courtesy of the Saint Louis Chess Club.
The youngest participant, WIM Alice Lee, joined the session online as she was unable to travel this weekend. The average rating of the students was a whopping 2497.
A lesson from the pandemic: Even though the experience of attending a camp in person is much superior to attending online, it is still better than not participating! Alice Lee had to join via zoom. The game being presented here is a fascinating struggle between Jonas Bjerre vs. Nikolas Theodorou.
The top Danish Chess Player: Jonas Buhl Bjerre. Jonas has been part of the Young Stars program for three years. He is trained by the head coach of the Young Stars program GM Alexander Chernin. Photo Courtesy of the Saint Louis Chess Club.
Jonas Bjerre recently crossed the 2600 mark and is currently the highest rated player in all of Denmark. His next big challenge will be at the 2022 Chess Olympiad in Chennai, leading the Denmark squad as their #1 board. His tournament game against Abhi must have felt rather sour as he let his fellow Young Star narrowly escape.
Despite facing strong opposition, “Abhi” had a fantastic performance at the Summer Classic. Photo Courtesy of the Saint Louis Chess Club.
Abhimanyu Mishra has been a hot topic for the chess world in the past year. He shattered Sergey Karjakin’s record to become the youngest GM of all time. He is now making quick strides towards his next goal: breaking 2600. He picked up a whopping 17 points towards this goal in the Summer Classic and is less than 50 points away.
Christopher Yoo crossed the 2550 mark at the exact same time as Abhimanyu: Christopher picked up 6 points in the Summer Classic, including a last round win against Young Stars alumnus GM John Burke. An overall success for all of these youngsters.
Strong chess training always involves beautiful compositions. Try your luck, or at least try to figure out the main ideas, in the following puzzle:
Only one of the participants got our featured composition this time around. Study by IM in Chess Composition Yehuda Hoch. Solution below.
The training session was the usual combination of hectic and intense. Variations were thrown around so often it was important to pay attention and keep up and calculate in your mind!
The Young Stars Program has open admission for talented kids from all over the World to apply to this elite program. Candidates may apply by submitting the application found here: KCF YoungStars Application. The program is open for talented players that are nine (9) years of age on January 1, 2022, and not older than thirteen (13) years of age on January 1, 2022.
Send the full applications to: youngstars@kasparovchessfoundation.org
