Vivek Jain got a perfect SAT score at the age of 14. The article mentions he has a shelf full of trophies, including chess.
I couldn’t find any member listed by that name though, nor in FIDE database either.
Any thoughts?
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/middle-school-student-aces-sats-212135842.html?vp=1
Edit: as pointed out by Allen, the boy’s name is Varun Jain
The teen’s name is Varun. But we don’t have a member by that name either.
Nice catch on that. Easy to overlook that they talk about his father first, when you re-reading it quickly later to just pick the name out.
There is 13230810, Varuin Jain, California, one three round event in 2005 run by Berkeley Chess school in Walnut Creek that had both Varuin (0-2-0, 512P2.) Also had a Vishal Jain participating. Station KGO identifies the SAT winner as an “East Bay” teen, dateline was Alamo, which would be consistent and in the neighborhood of the 2005 tournament. (Though he would have been… 6?)
Which points out a problem - a TD gets a name misspelled and it stays that way unless someone catches and fixes it. I’ve seen first names listed as last names and if you are not familiar with the culture of the player you can have no idea.
There is not a good solution to this issue.
We need an app for that.
The other problem is with common names of any culture… If we don’t have an ID it is still a guess. (Yep, think I guessed right above. But it is still a guess. And I’ve been wrong before - was sure I had the right player and I didn’t.)
Especially in cultures with word origins in different alphabets from Latin, a person may elect to change the spelling or his or her name, as well. Usually I’ve found it is from a gramatically correct spelling to one that is phonetically better - avoiding mispronunciation. Not to mention names with perfectly acceptable variant common spellings. (Sometimes I’ll play with telemarketers. With five first name spelling variations and at least ten possible last name spellings I can have a lot of fun.) And then there are those who adopt a European name and decide to revert to their given name, or vice versa.
Back to the original topic… If you look at the list of finalists for various national competitions such as Math Olympiad, Physics Olympiad and Intel Talent Search, you will routinely find chess players.
Often they are good players (say 1800-2000), but not necessarily masters. Indeed, it is difficult to dedicate the time required to excel at multiple activities. Think of “10,000 Hours to Greatness.”
Michael Aigner