It’s not my intention to turn this blog into a Conrad Holt Admiration Society, but after I wrote yesterday’s post I did a little bit of sleuthing that showed me just how unusual his chess career has been, compared to other U.S. juniors. Of course he’s already unusual simply by virtue of being #2 on the USCF Under-21 list. (Ray Robson is #1 by a mile). But it’s how Holt has gotten there that is striking.
I already mentioned how quickly he bounded over the 2100s, leaping from 2124 to 2250 in two tournaments. Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t the first time he did something like that. Earlier, he skipped Class C entirely: his rating went from 1325 to 1607 in one tournament and never fell below 1600 again. Perhaps even more remarkable, he came within a silly two rating points of skipping the 1900s. He went from 1875 to 1998, and in his next tournament he went over 2000 and never looked back.
This made me wonder how common it is for chess prodigies to “skip a grade” — in other words, skip over a 100-point rating interval. It turns out that it’s pretty unusual. And skipping a whole 200-point category is so unusual that Holt is the only one in the top 50 juniors who has done it.
I studied the rating history to date of the top 50 juniors in the U.S., and here are the ones who have “skipped a grade,” along with the grades they skipped and their current ranking on the under-21 list. [Technical note: I didn’t count it when somebody skipped a grade below the 1200’s, because it’s far too easy to skip the 1100’s, 1000’s, etc.]
#2. Conrad Holt (skipped 14, 15, and darn near 19).
#11. William Fisher (skipped 12)
#12. Samuel Sevian (skipped 13)
#18. Michael Lee (skipped 15)
#19. Luke Harmon-Vellotti (skipped 13)
#31. Christopher Gu (skipped 12)
#33. Sean Vibbert (skipped 16)
#35. Michael William Brown (skipped 14)
#42. Deepak Aaron (skipped 12)
#46. Kapil Chandran (skipped 15)
#48. Jarod Pamatmat (skipped 12)
#50. James Black (skipped 13)
By the way, James Black almost skipped the entire Class D, when he jumped from 1192 to 1441. Unfortunately, he had previously gone over 1200 and then slid back down to 1192, so technically he did not skip the 1200’s.
So 12 of the top 50 players skipped a grade. Another eight players bypassed a grade temporarily but slid back down into it. The highest grade that anybody skipped was the 1600s (by Sean Vibbert, who went 1556-1716 and never looked back).
One thing I learned from this is that today’s juniors — at least the ones in the top 50 — play a WHOLE LOT more rated chess games than I did in my teenage years. I’m not sure whether it’s because they have more opportunities, or more commitment, or both. Because they’re playing rated chess constantly (even more than a game a day sometimes — see, for instance, #24 Joshua Colas and #94 Sarah Chiang) their rating doesn’t get so far behind their ability, so they don’t have the big 100-point-plus lurches.
Clearly Conrad Holt has a unique talent, but also the fact that he comes from a small state (Kansas) with fewer tournaments might have something to do with his huge strides forward.
I didn’t have the patience to go through the same exercise for players #51-100 on the rating list. However, I did pick out a couple at random, and I noticed that #79 Nolan Hendrickson — who also comes from a Midwestern state, Wisconsin — did something even Holt couldn’t. He jumped three classes in a single bound, going from 1212 to 1643 in one tournament and skipping over the 1300’s, 1400’s, and 1500’s! He was helped by the fact that his 1212 was a provisional rating.
P.S. I was never a chess prodigy, but I did have one prodigy-like tournament in my chess career. At the 1976 Pennsylvania State Championship I tied for first in the under-2000 section when I was still just a 1600 player. My published rating went directly from 1669 to 1838, and I never spent a day in the 1700’s. It was interesting to see that none of the current top 50 juniors have duplicated that feat.
However, I want to emphasize that this does not prove anything except the fact that I didn’t play in very many tournaments as a junior. So I had a lot of “accrued improvement” that was finally released in one great tournament. Also, the rating system was somewhat different back then, and so it’s possible that giant rating jumps were easier to make. (It depends on the “K value” and also on the feedback points.)
