Frederic's chess tales (Material)

Fablous Fabiano!

In 2007 I published this picture of a child, Photoshopped in sepia tones, and asked my readers: who is this future grandmaster? Readers suggest a dozen names, and many got it right: it was the three-year-old Fabiano Caruana. At the time of writing he was fifteen, the youngest grandmaster in the world and strongest player in Italy, the country of his parents.

Fabiano was born in Miami, Florida on the 30th of July, 1992, solely of Italian ancestry, since all eight of his great-grandparents originated from Italy. Fabiano had dual citizenship – holding passports from both the United States and Italy.

Earliest pictures: Fabiano at two and at three in the home garden at Coconut Grove, Florida.

With his mum and dad. | Photos kindly provided by his parents.

In his nursery class at Temple Beth Am in Miami, Florida, first grade school photo at Park Slope, Brooklyn

At the age of four the family moved from Miami to Park Slope Brooklyn (Bobby Fischer's former neighborhood). There, at the age of five, in an after school program at Temple Beth Elohim, his chess journey began. Within six months, he played his first tournament in Queens, New York. Susan Polgar's chess club helped start his chess career. Later he played at many clubs within the New York City area. Fabiano's trainers were National Master Bruce Pandolfini and GM Miron Sher. He also trained with GM Pal Benko, when Pal was spending summers in New Jersey, and via the Internet with GM Gregory Kaidanov.

In September 2003 in the first round of the New York Grand Prix tournament at Manhattan's Marshall Chess Club, Fabiano defeated grandmaster Aleksander Wojtkiewicz, setting the record as the youngest player ever to defeat an international grandmaster in a USCF sanctioned tournament. He was 10 years, 61 days old at the time, and set a new record. The previous record was set by Hikaru Nakamura at the age of 10 years, 117 days. He beat international grandmaster Arthur Bisguier in 1998.

In the record setting game, played at a time control of game in 30 minutes, Caruana demonstrated exceptional maturity and finished the game with a sacrifice that lead directly to an easily won king and pawn endgame.

Having decided to pursue chess professionally, it was time to move forward, and Europe was the place to be. So, in November of 2004 the family moved from Brooklyn to Madrid. This ended his early chess years in the United States.

Madrid was selected solely because IM Boris Zlotnik lived there. Fabiano trained with Boris from November of 2004 to Marrch of 2007, and it helped him tremendously. His Elo increased from 2219 to 2513, and he earned an IM title along with his first GM norm.

In April of 2007, it was time to again move forward, and the family moved to Budapest to start training with GM Alex Chernin. Fabiano's second GM norm came in that same month (April), while playing at the First Saturday tournament and sleeping on the floor of an empty flat in the Buda hills. In July 2008 he completed his third GM norm, setting the record as the youngest ever American and Italian to earn the GM title, again surpassing the record set by GM Hikaru Nakamura.

Regarding federations: from age five to age 13 Fabiano played for the United States. But in October of 2005 he changed his FIDE affiliation to Italy. This was a natural change since he lived in Europe and intended to stay there. In the foreseeable future the family intends to move to Italy.

The eleven-year-old playing at the Marshall Chess Club against IM Yury Lapshun

For the most part Fabiano did not attend school, but studied at home. His academicswere very solid. He enjoyed reading, writing, movies, and ping pong. For physical conditioning he ran ten kilometers every day, when not playing in a chess tournament.

The youngest grandmasters in history, at the time, were the following:

No.	Player	Nat.	years	months	days	year
1	Sergey Karjakin	UKR	12	7	0	2002
2	Parimarjan Negi	IND	13	3	22	2006
3	Magnus Carlsen	NOR	13	3	27	2004
4	Bu Xiangzhi	CHN	13	10	13	1999
5	Teimour Radjabov	AZE	14	0	14	2001
6	Ruslan Ponomaryov	UKR	14	0	17	1997
7	Etienne Bacrot	FRA	14	2	0	1997
8	Maxime Vachier-Lagrave	FRA	14	4	0	2005
9	Peter Leko	HUN	14	4	22	1994
10	Yuri Kuzubov	UKR	14	7	12	2004
11	Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son	VIE	14	10	0	2004
12	Fabiano Caruana	ITA	14	11	20	2007
13	Koneru Humpy	IND	15	1	27	2002
14	Hikaru Nakamura	USA	15	2	19	2003
15	Pentala Harikrishna	IND	15	3	5	2001
16	Judit Polgar	HUN	15	4	28	1991
17	Alejandro Ramirez	CRI	15	5	14	2003
18	Bobby Fischer	USA	15	6	1	1958

Today Fabiano is the current US Chess Champion, winning the 2016 US Chess Championship who represented the United States on board one at the 42nd Chess Olympiad, where the tame won gold and he individual bronze. He won the Candidates Tournament 2018, becoming the first American challenger for the undisputed World Chess Championship since Bobby Fischer in 1972. He is often ranked number two in the FIDE rating list, behind Magnus Carlsen. He has made a number of very popular training CDs on the Ruy Lopez for ChessBase.