Sam Sevian

Samuel Sevian is an American Chess prodigy. On December 5, 2010, he became the youngest National Master in USCF history with a rating of 2206 at the age of 9 years, 11 months and 9 days.
 
Sam played his first tournament in Orlando on August 12, 2006. His first success came when he became the youngest Expert in U.S. history, an achievement that was featured in an article of the Los Angeles Times by International Master Jack Peters.
 
In 2012 Sevian completed all International Master Norms winning two Metropolitan IM and one GM Norm tournament held in Los Angeles. He became the World Champion in the U12 category in Maribor Slovenia, in November 2012. His pre-tournament (FIDE) rating at the World Youth was 2347, almost 100 points above his nearest competitor.
 
"I really worked hard for it, hours of preparation every day before and during the tournament," Sam said.
 
In early 2012, Sam was one of handful of rising stars to be selected to the Young Stars - Team USA program, a joint partnership between the Kasparov Chess Federation (KCF) and the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, which was launched to find and train the country's top emerging chess players for competition with the best players in the world. Sam received intensive training with legendary World Champion GM Garry Kasparov, which Sam said was a big contributing factor to his recent success.
 
"The KCF helped us enormously," Sam said. "First, it was Garry's camps held in Saint Louis and New York where we got to train with the Champion himself, and of course long and frequent training sessions with GM Alexander Chernin, who helped me grow over the last year."
 
Sam said his plans for improvement involve further developing his opening repertoire.