Posts tagged: prodigy

The Smartest Guy Ever and Pushy Parenting

Abe went to a chess tournament last Sunday afternoon. The tournament was great for him as he played with several strong opponents. Although the tournament last until evening, it’s no problem for us since we were no far away from home. On the way back home, I believe, I heard an interesting story from the [...]

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Wednesday January 26th, 2011 in , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Roger Federer and his parents

I read Anxiety On The Grass from New Yorker (issue of June 28, 2010). The article talked about Roger Federer: Unlike Agassi and countless other tennis prodigies, Federer never had to deal with pressure from an ambitious parent…His Swiss-born father… and his mother, who is South African, …played recreational tennis at the firm’s small club [...]

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A story remembered

After reading this article (The Leap) from New York Magazine, I felt very very sad. I remember a similar case happened to one of my classmates when I was in the graduate school. After the first exam, at which I did poorly, so were most in the class—many failed, as told by the professor the [...]

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Wednesday June 16th, 2010 in , , , , , | No Comments »

The talent myth and the science of success

Yesterday evening, driving Abe home from his soccer practice, I heard something interesting from an interview on NPR: Some one said that no chess players had reached grandmaster quicker than 10 years.  I had an immediate doubt whether it’s a fact.  I knew some recent chess prodigies got the GM titles when they were younger [...]

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Thursday April 29th, 2010 in , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Jeff Sarwer—From a child chess prodigy to a successful poker player

I know that many people have heard of Jeff, either by watching this video or reading this wonderful interview by Jennifer Shahade. I recently read the book “Searching for Bobby Fisher” by Fred Waitzkin. (Not the movie as I talked in other posts). Although this book is about the author’s son, another chess prodigy named [...]

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Friday January 15th, 2010 in , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Do foreign language skills really help people to be smart?

Whenever we visit the local library, David, my younger son always loves to do the check-out using the auto-check-out machine. Since he is a toddler and not tall enough to reach the scan platform, he has to step on his toes and try hard, if his brother helps him, David will scream, he wants to [...]

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Wednesday January 6th, 2010 in , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Let’s talk about Josh Waitzkin

Recently I reread a very good article about Josh Waitzkin from Betsy’s blog “Chess Parents and Kids”(It is pity that Betsy left her blog at November, 2008. We would like to see her back). Many of you know  Josh was being featured in the movie “Searching for Bobby Fisher”, he was a chess prodigy and [...]

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