A Chess Champion—Aged Four

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30393, 18 March 1964, Page 19

A Chess Champion—Aged Four

MOSCOW.

Zurab Sopia is onlyfour years old. But he can already hold his own at chess, and often defeats adults. Zurab is the youngest of five sons of a collective farmer in the little Georgian town of Gali, and learned to play by watching his brothers. They thought that he was just waiting for the pieces to be removed from the board so that he could use them as toys. Then, one day, one of them made a wrong move with a knight. His opponent did not notice and was about to go on with the game when little Zuriko pointed out the mistake. The brothers looked at each other in amazement and decided to put him to the test.

“Come on then Zuriko, set the board!” they cried.

The little hands moved slowly across the board, carefully putting all the pieces in their right positions. They then set him a few elementary problems. After a little thought, he solved them all. When they had played a full game with him, they were convinced that he understood chess.

From that day on, young Zuriko became his brothers’ chief opponent. The family’s acknowledged chess champion, 25-year-old Nugzari, began to teach him the theory of the game. The little boy went round to neighbours’ houses with his chess board under his arm, and sometimes looked into the farm’s house of culture. Then a well-known Georgian journalist from Tbilisi, who was also a keen chess player, came to Gali. A match was arranged with Zuriko. The boy won. When he returned to Tbilisi, the journalist wrote about the

young prodigy from Gali. Zurab Sophia had achieved fame.

losif Batnikov, a Master of Sport for chess, described how he played the boy when he went to Gali to give a demonstration, playing a number of games at once. Undeterred by a crowd of several hundred people, Zuriko dropped his shoes on the floor, took off his jacket and sat on the table. The game soon turned into a series of tests for the little boy. Batnikov purposely gave him opportunities for double attacks.

When Zuriko had passed all the tests in middle-game, Batnikov moved on to the endgame.

“We played until the kings were unprotected,” Batnikov said.

“Draw!” exclaimed Zuriko without hesitation.

But he is not Gali’s only four-year-old chess expert.

Kamola Oboladze, daughter of a local schoolmaster, rivalled young Zuriko at a chess festival at Sukhumi in the autumn of 1963. Bikhail Botvinnik, former world chess champion, heard about the two small experts from Gali, and asked their parents to bring them to the festival. While Botvinnik and other grandmasters looked on, the two soleinly faced each other. Kamola drew black but she wanted white. Like a true gentleman, Zuriko let her have her way. Botvinnik spent nearly all day watching the two children.

The next day they were the youngest participants in the festival. Zuriko was obviously doing well, but so that Kamola would not be upset, be was advised to offer her a draw. The little boy magnanimously did so, and the two of them became by popular acclaim world child champions.— (Reuter.)