2008 World Junior Championship
Leaders after 4 rounds:
1 GM SAFARLI Eltaj 2527 AZE 4
2 GM LI Chao B 2590 CHN 3½
GM HOWELL David 2561 ENG 3½
WGM HOU Yifan 2557 CHN 3½
GM BRKIC Ante 2530 CRO 3½
LIN Chen 2417 CHN 3½
Here is the full standings.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Where the heck is the American rep?
The American Rep is in 71st place.
Only one:
Rank, 71
Seed, 85
HUGHES Tyler B. 2161 USA 2 pts
The USCF is sending a 1466 player to Beijing instead of 2621 Polgar. Now they’re sending a 2161 player to the world junior instead of many 2500 juniors? What’s going on?
What is the qualification requirement to represent US? Why USA team only has one player while other countries send bunch of players? In scholastic chess, we have many brilliant junior players, some of them are already IM or have rating approaching GM level. Why none of them is in the USA team?
From USCF web page. Top under-21 with rating 2400+. Looks like we do have many better choice than sending a 2100+ player. I am also curious to know why.
Heck, many years ago when I was 18 I was 2000+, sad to know that with a little more effort then-18-year-old me can now represent the US :-((.
1 Nakamura, Hikaru 20 2732
2 Hess, Robert L 16 2538
3 Lenderman, Alex 18 2528
4 Milman, Lev 20 2502
5 Bercys, Salvijus 18 2479
6 Robson, Ray S 13 2467
7 Ludwig, Daniel 18 2448
8 Arnold, Marc Tyler 15 2421
Maybe the better question is why did all of those talented 2400+ players decline to participate in the qualifier for World Youth? Tyler Hughes went to Turkey because he won the US Junior fair in square. Apparently the others were not interested.
Top Junior Chess in the USA is dead (do not mixed it with a huge Scholastic Chess), look on US Junior Open, US Junior Closed;
the same story with the US representative on the World Junior who is current US Junior Champion, (4 and half players semi-double robin tournament) but just 2161 FIDE.
The top American Juniors, like Hess and Lenderman (Hikaru I think is uneligible as he will be 21 this year) even did not know about the World Junior Championship.
The problem is the USCF scheduled it during final’s week so all the kids from the east coast can’t play. It’s another stupidity by the uscf. They apparently forgot to check the dates when school is out.