Utah Chess Player ranked #1 in the United States for his age group!
May 26, 2009 -- West Jordan, Utah
It's
official. Kayden Troff, Utah's own "Mozart of Chess" has
been recognized by the United States Chess Federation as the best
player in the country in his age group. Every two months
the USCF publishes a list of the highest rated players in the country
in different age groups and for different genders. Utah
players often show up on lists of the top 100 players in each age group
-- most notably Tony Chen (age 15) and Janice Chen (age 17) who have
been in the top 50 in their age group since they started playing
tournaments many years ago.
However, Kayden Troff
has just accomplished a first for Utah -- he has reached the number one
position on a list! Just before turning age eleven, Kayden
raised his USCF chess tournament rating to 2013, making him an "Expert"
level player at the tender age of ten. The official list
has been published online at http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Itemid,371?op=list&month=0906&f=10
By
comparison, there are just eight other expert level players, rated over
2000, who participate in Utah tournaments. Most of these strong
players have devoted themselves to serious study the game and have
played in nationally-rated tournaments since long before Kayden was
born. The 2013 rating Kayden achieved at age ten put Kayden
just five points ahead of Idaho's Luke Harmon-Velotti, who became a
national chess celebrity last year when he topped the list of
9-year-olds. It is remarkable that both of the 10-year-old,
expert-level chess players in USA -- and there are only two of them in
the whole country -- come from sparsely populated Western
states. Usually players from New England, California or
Texas take the top spots on the lists.
But Kayden's
chess accomplishments are even more astonishing than reaching the #1
position on the list of 10-year-olds. On the June USCF
rating report, he is also the #1 rated quick-chess player in the
country for all players under that age of 13! That list has
been published at the website http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Itemid,371?op=list&month=0906&f=13Q
The
US Chess Federation maintains a separate rating system for games played
using a fast time control, where each player has an hour or less to
play the entire game. Kayden has been playing regularly in
online chess tournaments through World Chess Live in Pennsylvania, and
this has given him the chance to go head-to-head with some of the best
young players in the nation. Kayden often emerges in one of the
top two spots in these tournaments, and they have pushed his
quick-chess rating to the phenomenal mark of 2152 before the cutoff
date for publishing this list.
By comparison, Kayden is
the top-rated quick-chess player in the state of Utah! In
February he demonstrated that he deserved that distinction by winning
the title of "2009 Utah Speed Chess Champion" by a wide margin,
including a 2-0 shutout over Utah's only active chess master at the
time, Jeff Phillips. Each player had only five minutes to play
the whole game in that tournament. In March Kayden won the Utah
Game/60 title, showing himself to be the best in the state at the
slower end of the "quick chess" category too.
Since
March, Kayden has won all the monthly "Utah Expert Series" tournaments
with a cummulative score of 10-1 against the best players in the state,
losing only one game to the reigning Utah State Champion, Vanel
Sanchez. Kayden's long-game climbed to 2070 over the weekend, but
Sanchez still retains a slight advantage at 2086.
What
lies ahead for Kayden? He plans to continue studying the
game he loves several hours each day, and he plans to continue playing
the toughest opponents he can find. Unfortunately, Kayden has
almost outgrown his native Utah, and so he will have to travel with his
family to find more challenging competition. He plans to
attend the US Chess School in New York City in June, immediately after
playing the National Open in Las Vegas. Further afield,
Kayden will be invited to play in International tournaments this year
because of his phenomenal accomplishments.
Kayden's family
runs a chess camp during the summer, along with the Treiman
family. Kayden's oldest brother, Jeremy, is the state high-school
chess champion and also a state champion runner. He teaches
alongside Kayden and their middle brother, Zach, who is a star baseball
player as well as a strong chess player. Scott Treiman, a good
friend of the Troff brothers, rounds out the credentials of the
teachers because he is the state Middle-School champion. The
website for the chess camp is http://tntchesscamp.blogspot.com/
These
fun and popular camps help offset some of the travel expenses
that have accrued for the Troff family in support of Kayden's
genius. However, it is clear that the family will need to find
additional sponsorship for Kayden this year if he is going to pursue
his path toward becoming a chess legend like Bobby Fischer, the only
American ever to win the world title. The family has set up a
website that lists Kayden's many accomplishments, including a link
where individuals can make online donations through Paypal into an
account set up specifically to support Kayden's chess. That
link can be found at the website http://kaydentroff.blogspot.com/
Playing
high-level chess around the country costs many thousands of dollars per
year, and playing the best players in the world can cost in the tens of
thousands of dollars. Potential sponsors, whether individual or
corporate, might ask themselves, "Is this kid really so uniquely
talented, or is he just one of many highly talented youngsters
deserving of extra support?" The answer to that question
can be found in two other lists that compare Kayden to his older chess
peers.
On the list of the best quick-chess players
in the country under age 21, Kayden comes in at #26. New
York's International Master Alex Lenderman, at age 19, is by far the
highest rated player on that list. Alex was the World Chess
Champion (!) under age 16 in the year 2005. Alex and Kayden have
played four times in the World Chess League online tournaments and have
each won two games. Alex called Kayden's most recent win
"brilliant." That list can be found at http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Itemid,371?op=list&month=0906&f=21Q
The
US Chess Federation also publishes a list of the best quick-chess
players in the nation under the age of 16. On this list,
Kayden comes in a modest #5. That list can be found at http://main.uschess.org/component/option,com_top_players/Itemid,371?op=list&month=0906&f=16Q
Upon
closer examination, however, one might notice that the #4 player, only
seven points above Kayden, is thirteen year old Daniel Naroditsky, the
2007 World Chess Champion (!) for ages 12 and under. In the
#3 position, just 8 points ahead of Kayden, is 14-year-old
International Master Ray Robson of Florida, the youngest player ever
invited to play in the US Closed Championships, and also the youngest
player ever to win the prestigious Samford Scholarship, an award that
sponsors the recipient to study and play chess exclusively for two
years. Most winners of this scholarship have gone on to
become chess grandmasters and/or chess professionals.
Is
Kayden capable of playing among the best players in the country or the
world? His quick chess rating suggests that, despite having just
reached his eleventh birthday, he could be ready to take on the very
best. It is also worth noting that these lists, although
just published, don't reflect the most recent tournament
results. Kayden won the Utah Expert Series #4 tournament
last Saturday with a spectacular 5-1 performance. This
raised his quick chess rating even higher, to 2164. That
means that, as of this writing, Kayden has already overtaken both
Robson and Naroditsky in their quick chess ratings. What about
the #1 and #2 players on the list, Alec Getz and Conrad
Holt? After their most recent tournament results, they are
both rated 2163.
In other words, if the same list were to
be republished today, reflecting the most up-to-date ratings, Kayden
would no longer be in the #5 position. Although he is less
than three weeks into his eleventh year, Kayden Troff is actually the
#1 rated quick chess player in the United States under the age of
16!! A discrepancy in chess ability this large between a young
individual and his highly-talented national peers is an extremely rare
occurrence. The popular worldwide chess site, Chessbase, has
dubbed Kayden "the next American supertalent" in a lineage that
includes Fischer and the current US Champion, 21-year-old Hikaru
Nakamura, who first won his first US Champion title at age 16.
Fischer,
by comparison, won the US Champion title at age 14, and then seven more
times, winning the tournament every time he played in it. At age
19 he turned in an unprecedented 11-0 shutout score against the best
players in the country, a phenomenon that has never been repeated or
rivaled by an American. Fischer furthered his own legend with
back-to-back 6-0 match score shutouts against two of the top players in
the world on his way to winning the world champion title.
These kind of shutout victories are unheard of at the top levels of
chess -- some observers at the time even speculated that Fischer must
have been a space alien from the planet Krypton, because his
accomplishments at the chess board transended all expectations of what
was humanly possible.
Anyone who has seen the family movie
Searching for Bobby Fischer, a true story about Josh Waitzkin, has a
sense of what life is like for a young chess superstar. But
all serious American chess players know that our country hasn't really
seen the likes of Bobby Fischer since 1972, though young players like
Nakamura, Robson and Naroditsky have certainly shown potential to
become "The One." Meanwhile, supertalents continue to emerge in
places like Russia, India, Bulgaria, Armenia and, most recently,
Norway. But now Kayden's phenomenal numbers suggest that he truly
could become the next chess legend that Americans have been searching
for since the end of the Fischer era.
The next two
years will be critical in Kayden's chess development, because studying
six or seven hours a day won't be enough. He will also have to
play tournaments in big cities around the world if he is going to
continue to grow toward the highest levels of chess. If you
would like to become part of the team encouraging him to attain the
very highest levels he is capable of, then please donate to his cause
and follow his latest victories at http://kaydentroff.blogspot.com/
article written by Damian Nash,
USCF senior-level tournament director,
USCF expert-level chess player,
Teacher of gifted/talented students.
chess@krusemer.com
(435) 260-2789