Joshua Waitzkin

Joshua Waitzkin ( born December 4, 1976 in New York City ) is an American chess player and Taijiquan athletes. He was regarded as the greatest chess talent at times the U.S. since Robert James Fischer.

Life

At the age of 6 years, he discovered his passion for chess. His first teachers were players in a Park of New York, later he was supervised by the famous chess coach Bruce Pandolfini. As a 11 -year-old he scored a draw in a simultaneous exhibition against the then world champion Garry Kasparov. He won several national champion for his age group in each series and was at the age of 16 years, already an International Master. His father, Fred Waitzkin sports journalist in 1988 wrote a book about him, which became a bestseller. 1993, it was filmed by Paramount Pictures. The original title of the book and the film is Searching for Bobby Fischer, the German is, the film Searching for Bobby Fischer. At the Junior World Championships in 1994, he finished fourth.

Waitzkin is also known for his chess lessons chess programs in the Chessmaster series and wrote a book Josh Waitzkin 's Attacking Chess (1995, ISBN 0-684-80250-3 ).

He has retired for some time from professional chess, so he never had the grandmaster title. His Elo rating is unchanged since January 2000 and is 2464 (as of March 2011). Instead, he practiced the martial art of Taijiquan and it has become even more successful than in chess. In addition to eight national championships, he also won the world middleweight championship.

In 2007 he published the book The Art of Learning (ISBN 0-7432-7745-7 ), in which he describes his experiences in chess and martial arts.