The Muggles of the Chess Wizardy World

The Muggles of the Chess Wizardy World - Blitz story on  Asian descendents chess player in the western hemisphere.

The Muggles is a person born into a non magical family - JK Rowling


This is a weird posting ,but I just want to highlight a new chess phenomenon nowdays. There are a few sampling of success chess player who is a half breed, from a Western and Asian parent. Mostly they are a normal student, seeking for extra activity in the school, end up success and then converted into serious chessplayer. I like to present a phenomenon of Far East Asian parent or mixed parents, that choose chess as their children extra curriculum. Thus I suspect the Far East mummy loves scholastic competition as a reason.

There will plenty of examples, especially if Asians certainly also means Indian, Vietnamese and others. What I like to pointed out here is not story about grew up Indian or Filipino chess player seeking fortune in the West. But this is about phenomenol Asian mixed race young baby that suddenly turn to be a chess GM. If I followed report from USCF website on Scholastic chess, Asian surname (especially Chinese) is coming up too frequently now, especially for girls.



Here are few examples, very familiar names.

Hikaru Nakamura, born to a Japanese father and an American mother. Grew up in Japan and at the age of two, he moved with his parents to the United States. He began playing chess prior to the age of five and was coached by his Sri Lankan stepfather, FIDE Master and chess author Sunil Weeramantry. Now a succesfull chess player with die hard fans following his Twitter!

Ray Robson
Early life Robson was born in Guam to Gary Robson, a professor at the college of education (applied linguistics) at St. Petersburg College, and Yee-chen, a kindergarten teacher at Country Day School.[2] They later moved to Largo, Florida, where they live today. An only child, he learnt chess from his father at age three. Later become youngest GM in USA. I can't confirm what "asian" is Yee-chen, but geographically Guam is not really Western. But his breakthru in chess is outstanding here, and a big proud to Guam.

Moving to European soil, we found:

David Howell
David Wei Liang Howell (born November 14, 1990[1]) is an English chess player. He is the youngest chess Grandmaster in the United Kingdom. Howell was born in Eastbourne to Angeline (originally from Singapore) and Martin Howell. He has a younger sister, Julia, and lives with his family in Seaford, East Sussex.

Anish Giri (born June 28, 1994) is the son of a Nepalese father (Sanjay Giri), and a Russian mother (Olga Giri). Anish was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 28 June 1994. In 2002, he moved to Japan with his parents. Since then he had been residing in Japan, and visiting St. Petersburg regularly. Since February 2008, Anish and his family have been living in the Netherlands, where his father is working in a research and consulting foundation (Deltares). He also spoke Japanese and Dutch, as the later is his federation now.

Another "Western" continents also provide sampling for this "trend".

Zhao Zong-Yuan (born June 26, 1986, Beijing) is an Australian chess Grandmaster. He is the current Australian Chess Champion and number one ranked chess player in Australia. Early lifeZhao grew up in Coffs Harbour, Australia, a pharmacy graduate from the University of Sydney. Zhao is probably 100% Chinese, judging from his name.

George Xie (born October 20, 1985) is an Australian chess player and 2009 and 2011 Joint Australian Open Chess Champion. He became an International Master in 2006[2] is ranked 3rd in Australia. He was a board 4 member of the Australian national team at the 2008 Dresden Olympiad.

New Zealand - And if you haven't seen this website, seems like this chess tournament done in a Chinatown.

to be continue....