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 相關詞匯 【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 來自新加坡的八歲天才少年阿什瓦特?考希克擊敗了國際象棋特級大師，成為獲得這一殊榮的最年輕棋手。 據媒體報道，經過三小時的對弈，8歲零6個月的考希克周日在瑞士布格多夫城堡公開賽上擊敗了37歲的波蘭特級大師雅切克?斯托帕。 考希克打破了幾天前創造的最小年齡棋手成功挑戰特級大師紀錄，當時，來自塞爾維亞的萊昂尼德?伊萬諾維奇（8歲零11個月）擊敗了 59歲的保加利亞選手米爾科?波普切夫。 考希克是印度公民，7年前隨家人移居新加坡，他說：“第一次能夠在棋盤上戰勝一位特級大師，而且是在古典（國際象棋）領域，我很激動，這太棒了，我替自己驕傲。” 天才少年棋手打破記錄的浪潮始于一周前的2月12日；那一天在貝爾格萊德，伊萬諾維奇成為第一位在古典國際象棋中擊敗特級大師的九歲以下棋手。 據國際象棋網站Chess.com報道，國象競技圈“最近目睹了低齡棋手取得非凡成績的熱潮，這也許是由于受到新冠疫情的影響，以及等級分制度跟不上兒童實力提升的步伐”。 據報道，伊萬諾維奇在贏得三場比賽、戰平兩場比賽和僅遭遇一場失利后，獲得了四分。據Chess.com報道，這場勝利當時讓他成為在古典錦標賽中擊敗特級大師的最年輕棋手。但這一紀錄僅僅保持了一周。 周日，考希克在與斯托帕的前三盤棋中獲勝。但他在后面的一盤棋中輸給了23歲的英國棋手哈里?格里夫，格里夫是2022年英國國際象棋冠軍。考希克的母親阿什瓦特羅希尼?拉馬錢德蘭說她為這場勝利感到高興。這位37歲的母親說： “我們都特別高興，但他必須迅速集中注意力，所以比賽結束后我們沒什么時間立即慶祝，但回家后一定會和全家一起慶祝。”考希克的家人說，孩子四歲時，父母給了他國際象棋的啟蒙。幾個月后，他就能戰勝父母和其他家庭成員。現在，他每個工作日下兩個小時國際象棋，周末每天下六到七個小時。 他說：“下棋很有趣，能讓你腦子更好用、更聰明，因為下國際象棋時需要大量思考來找到最佳招數。” 考希克的父母說，最大的挑戰是不讓孩子吃Juicy Drop果汁糖，這會導致他精力旺盛后迅速疲勞。 (Translated by Debra) | 