By Julie Ann Grimm The New Mexican
April 10, 2007
Kraai’s Move Up
Santa Fe chess coach Jesse Kraai gained the elite status of genius-level “grandmaster” after beating a pair of top players Sunday night in Connecticut. The only higher title for a chess player is world champion.
Kraai, long a prominent figure in New Mexico’s chess world and a Santa Fe High School graduate, became the first American-born player in 10 years to become a grandmaster, according to a Monday Internet posting by the U.S. Chess Federation.
Here is the fulls story.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
I am still a little confused. Does he have the title now or does he have to play a few more games to raise his elo to 2500. Maybe the games will raise his elo to the 2500 level.
New Mexico is my favorite Hot Pepper State. The University of New Mexico has now received a Guinness award for the hottest hot pepper. You can purchase the seeds from them. this baby has over 1 million scoville units. Jalapeno are hot at 5,000 scoville units. Habanero are usually about 250,000. so you know this one is really hot.
http://www.nmsu.edu/~ucomm/Releases/2007/february/hottest_chile.htm
If I’d known that the Genius title came free with the GM title, I’d have tried harder to get one. The things you learn after it’s too later…
“genius-level”? lol. The person who wrote this article doesn’t seem to be too well-informed on what is necessary to be a GM. A GM title is a sign of a lot of hard work, not genius.
you can be a genius and a gm but I think one is certianly possible without the other.
I am a Genius and I worked super hard and I got almost no where at chess. Haha.
Love the game. Happy playing at my level today. I think this is the key for me today. I play against people of my strength and I have fun with the games.
“WCChamp Candidate” is not a formal title. But personally I think of it as separating the few elite grandmasters from the hundreds of others.
Typically, a “wcchamp candidate” is someone who played in the final series of matches, or the final tournament, that chose the challenger for the next WCChamp match against the sitting WCChamp.
One step higher than “wcchamp candidate” is “wcchamp challenger”. The few players that played a match against the WCChamp for the title of champ, but lost the match, are the “wcchamp challengers”, to me.
GeneM
It’s good to see another GM crowned, particularly one who is from New Mexico rather than Manhattan or Los Angeles. A GM is a good thing from whatever locale, of course, but our hobby can a diverse set of heroes.
It is exciting that Jesse works with and inspires so many kids, and great that they can follow his accomplishments. It’s often the other way around – we adults are following and praising the kids. So it’s good for the scholastic kids here in NM (and there are many!) to see the hard work of their chess coach (Jesse) pay off. To the writer, thanks for following chess in NM.