General
Erdogmus Yagiz Kaan. Get used to this name. The 14-year-old chess prodigy from Turkey, already the highest-rated player in history at Elo 2646 for his age, produced an endgame for the ages to checkmate India’s Aditya Mittal in the fourth round of the FIDE Grand Swiss meet in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on Sunday.
Yagiz delivered a finish of high aesthetic value under time pressure, sealing a timeless win in 42 moves.“This game will remain in the books of combinations,” said seven-time national champion Praveen Thipsay. The position was extraordinary: Mittal had two queens, a rook and an extra pawn against Yagiz’s two rooks and pawns — a staggering material imbalance of minus 12 on the board. Yet the computer screamed forced mate in six or fewer moves, with only minutes left on Yagiz’s clock.
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Speaking to Chessbase India, Yagiz revealed he first considered “rook takes queen” before discovering the unstoppable mating sequence. He hounded the white king relentlessly until it had nowhere to hide, clinching victory with a checkmate delivered by a pawn that had earlier been blocking Mittal’s queen. Mittal’s king had four possible squares to escape, but two were controlled by Yagiz’s king and the other two by his pawns.
The groundwork was laid by the rooks, who pushed the white king mercilessly up the board.Seeded 52nd in the 11-round Swiss League tournament — a qualification pathway to the Candidates — Yagiz had already denied world champion D Gukesh a win in the previous round with a precise perpetual check sequence. The Turkish teenager, trained by Azerbaijani GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, also has a reputation for frequently defeating world No.
1 Magnus Carlsen in online blitz games.His meteoric progress suggests the chess world is witnessing something extraordinary. The comparisons to Carlsen’s own prodigious rise at age 14 are inevitable, recalling the Norwegian’s victories over Sipke Ernst (Wijk aan Zee “C”), Evgeny Vladmirov and Surya Ganguly (Dubai), and Peter Heine Nielsen (Malmo) back in 2004.Yes, Carlsen was also 14 then.