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April 11, 1998
Boy, 10, Is Youngest Chess Master, Vaulting Past His Brother
By DEBRA WEST
HITE PLAINS -- For six years, Asuka Nakamura, 12, had outranked all the younger players.
But when the rankings were published in the April issue of the United States Chess Federation's Rating Supplement, it was swift, painful and annoyingly familiar.
The youngster who eclipsed 12-year-old Asuka was his pesky little brother, Hikaru.
Hikaru Nakamura turned 10 in December. His April rating of 2,203 made him the youngest person to achieve the rank of chess master in the United States, beating the record set by Vinay Bhat of San Jose, Calif., in January 1995. Hikaru shaved 97 days off the age record.
"You have to move pieces like you do in checkers," Hikaru said in an interview in his family's White Plains apartment, where first-place trophies line the walls like art.
"But it is like math, too. Things are orderly."
Hikaru's new distinction has brought increasing attention.
Today, his parents fielded telephone calls from Jay Leno's "Tonight" show and "Late Show With David Letterman." He accepted an invitation from "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee" for Monday morning.
But for all the hoopla surrounding Hikaru's status as the country's youngest chess master -- he was 10 years and 79 days old when he won a tournament and the ranking on Feb. 26 -- his parents are quick to point out that their older son, whose highest rating was 2,144, just below master, has a gift for the game as well.
"We are learning to deal with it as a family," said Sunil Weeramantry, the boys' stepfather and a professional chess coach. "The main issue is coming to grips with the reality that the younger one has passed the older one. There have been many, many adjustments. My other son is very strong. He just hasn't made master yet."
So everyone, it seems, wanted to talk to Hikaru and find out how a boy who began playing chess just three years ago increased his rating by a remarkable 159 points since December.
Players' ratings go up when they win games and down when they lose.
More points are won for beating better players. Maximum gain or loss is 32 points per game. It takes 2,200 points to be a master.
Hikaru was encouraged by a big victory against the international master Jay Bonin on Dec. 31, which made him the youngest American player to beat an international master. Coincidentally, he got a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records at a school book fair and realized that he had until the middle of May to beat the current record and become the youngest master in the country.
Then Hikaru set to work. He would get up before dawn and read about strategy, waking his stepfather with questions or reports of new discoveries. He began playing two tournaments a week. He learned to visualize moves in his head so that wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he was playing chess.
Not everyone agrees on what early success in chess means in the long run.
"Everybody's always looking to see who's the next Fischer and who's going to go on to be a grandmaster," said Bill Goichberg, vice president of the United States Chess Federation, who has seen Hikaru play at several tournaments. "Anybody who is that strong at that age has a chance to become world champion."
Robert Byrne, a grandmaster and the chess columnist for The New York Times, was more skeptical.
"It's nice to be able to do that when you're 10 years old, but there's a big difference between a national master and an international master," he said. Chess talent "develops in uneven ways."
Chess in the Weeramantry household is more than a game.
It's a family bond.
Mr. Weeramantry, 46, teaches chess at Hunter Elementary School, where chess is a requirement for kindergartners through fifth graders, and at half a dozen public and private schools in Westchester County. He also coaches several protégés privately and runs an educational consulting business, the National Scholastic Chess Foundation.
For all his enthusiasm for the game, Mr. Weeramantry did not introduce chess to his stepsons.
It was Asuka's early talent that introduced his mother to his stepfather. The boys were living with their mother, Carolyn, in California when Asuka won the national kindergarten championship in 1992. Asuka's talent caught Mr. Weeramantry's eye, and then the chess coach noticed the boy's mother.
"My son had a couple of titles before I knew who Sunil was," Mrs. Weeramantry, 38, said. "We met through chess, of course. In this family, what else?"
Mrs. Weeramantry doesn't play. She is a classically trained musician who teaches English to the wives of Japanese corporate executives in White Plains, where the family lives.
Excellence has its cost. Hikaru finds time to play trumpet but wishes he could fit Little League into his schedule. He can't. But at least Hikaru's teachers at Ridgeway Elementary School understand when he has to fly to Europe on a school night for a tournament.
"We'll go to tournaments and some kids will bring homework they have to do," Mrs. Weeramantry said. "Their teachers don't understand that this is hard work."
The competition between her sons troubles her. "Hikaru has confidence," she said. "It's the older one who sometimes needs patting on the back saying, 'You're really good, too.' "
For weeks at a time, Mrs. Weeramantry has banned any talk of chess in the house -- though it's hard to imagine that silence makes much difference.
The Weeramantry household is a living chess museum. In a hallway, the stepfather's certificate from the United States Chess Federation is displayed above Hikaru's and Asuka's baby pictures. A sculptured frieze of an oversize chess board sits in front of the television, waiting to be hung on the wall above. Bookcases are lined with books on strategy, trophies clutter the boys' rooms and two chess sets and a digital timer seem permanently fixed to the dining room table.
The competition between the boys may soon increase, Mr. Weeramantry concedes.
Hikaru's new rating insures that he will represent the United States in the 12-and-under division of the World Youth Championship, to be held in Spain in October. But Asuka will represent the United States in the Pan American Youth Championship in Brazil in May. If Asuka wins that championship, which he may well do, he will go on to represent the Americas in the World Youth Championship in October. In that event, the brothers will play against each other in their first tournament.
"This is something we have studiously avoided to this day," said Mr. Weeramantry, who achieved master rating at 15 1/2. "They have not yet been in a tournament together and I don't particularly want them to. At least, not until they are older."
Official tournament or not, the battle seems to have already begun.
On a recent afternoon, Asuka, a lanky sixth grader, proudly showed off the trophies in his bedroom, but when the talk turned to his chances of winning in the Brazil competition, his voice dropped to a whisper.
"I should say this quietly: Hikaru doesn't know this and he wouldn't want to," Asuka said. "But if I win the World Youth, I get the title of FIDE master. It takes a lot to become a FIDE master. It's worth more than a national master."
FIDE (pronounced FEE-day) is the French acronym for the international chess federation. It is the third-highest international chess rank, coming behind international master and the highest, grandmaster. Mr. Weeramantry holds the title of FIDE master. It is a more prestigious title than national master.
Hikaru, whose room is covered with baseball and hockey memorabilia and accented with penguin-covered blue sheets, was listening to a Yankee game on the radio that afternoon. He was following the game
with a homemade scorecard. He was tired from too many adult questions, too much attention, and reluctant to turn his attention away from the baseball game.
But when asked what the best thing about becoming master was, he had a quick answer.
"Beating people who are better than me," said the fourth grader, without looking up.
"Does that include your brother?" he was asked.
"Yeah," he said, smiling for the first time all afternoon.
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