Argentine chess prodigy Faustino Oro through to World Cup second round

Argentine chess wonderkid Faustino Oro advanced to the FIDE World Chess Championship second round on Monday, after beating Croatia’s Ante Brkic 5-3 in a tiebreaker match.  The Argentine prodigy beat Brkic after both players agreed to play a tiebreaker. The series had ended tied 1-1 after the initial duel on Sunday. Oro is the world’s youngest player with the International Master title at 12 years old, with a 2509 ELO ranking. The ELO is a system by which chess players are ranked by calculating their relative skill levels. Players earn points by defeating rivals with higher or similar ELO scores, depending on how big the difference between each other’s ranking is. In addition to his win, the Argentine prodigy was also chosen by the tournament organizers as the “best player of the first round.” Oro will now face India’s Santoshi Vidit (2716), seeded nineteenth, in the next round. The competition, held in Goa, India, features 206 chess players from 80 different countries. It awards two million dollars in prizes in total, of which $120,000 will go to the winner. Oro continues to rise “I’m pleased to move to the next round,” said Oro after the tiebreaker. “Brkic is a great player, so I’m thrilled, as I wasn’t sure I could win.”  Oro admitted that, while he plays mostly online, he “also enjoys the traditional format.” “My chess hero is Magnus Carlsen, no doubt,” he said, “and my dream is to win the World Championship.” Incidentally, Oro burst into the spotlight in 2024 after playing against Norway’s Carlsen, arguably the most famous chess player in the world today.  At the time, he shocked the world’s number-one player, beating him in the 2024 Bullet Brawl, a “bullet chess” tournament, where each player gets one minute on the clock and no time increments per move. Players are paired during a two-hour event, with games streamed online, and the one with the most points wins. “I like everything about this game, but the tactics are probably my favorite. Playing against great masters, figuring out difficult situations, all that,” Oro said after beating Brkic. Flores and Schnaider out It wasn’t all good news for Argentine chess players in Goa. Grandmaster Diego Flores (2558 ELO) was ousted by Kazakh Denis Makhnev (2525) in another tiebreaker, while International Master Ilan Schnaider, aged 14, lost to Serbian Aleksandar Indjic, ranked 89th in the world.