For those of you who doesn’t recognize this name - Eduardo Saverin has been an earlier associate of Mark Zukerberg when they both created what is now Facebook. He is now a billionaire (still holds 5% of Facebook stock) and lives in Singapure
Apparently Saverin played OTB rated chess when he was in school in 19xx and the article below claims:
“He made headlines at 13, when he beat a chess grandmaster in Orlando.”
Has anyone have more information? Quick scan of his MSA shows that he played in US Open once and did in fact scored an upset when he beat someone rated 2000+ while himself being rated 600 something.
Early in the movie “The Social Network” he is asked by the Zuckerberg character for a mathematical model for rating the photos of local college women on Zuckerberg’s pre-Facebook site. Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, gives him a logarithm: it’s the Elo rating formula.
Chess titles often get inflated in non-chess media. About six months ago I did a simultaneous exhibition at a library for charity. The head of public relations showed me the flyers he was putting it up and identified me as a “chess master” (I’m rated in the mid 1800s). I was able to able to stop any from going up.
The second draft of the flyer identified me as a “chess expert”
From the look of it, Saverin’s opponent (Mr. Feldstein) had a 2000 floor rating, so it’s probable that he had earned the National Master title (and the 2000 floor) sometime before 1992. However, MSA does not list him as having earned the National Master certificate. Mr. Feldstein is now deceased and played in his last event in 2011, and I believe (but don’t know) that MSA only started showing the year that someone earned a certificate (or simply “Yes” if the year was before 1992) after that, so maybe the system didn’t update for him since he was deceased.
I think that NM was inflated to GM. Most folks on the street don’t know the difference.