11 year old Luke Harmon-Vellotti from Boise, Idaho
I just received an email from Luke Harmon-Vellotti’s family that he recently finished solving all 5,334 puzzles in Polgar’s family book “CHESS”! This was a longtime project for Luke, and he was determined to correctly solve all the puzzles in the book before he turned 12 years old.
Last year Luke defeated 4 masters, 1 GM, and drew a 2350+ player at the Las Vegas International Chess Festival! He also won the SP World Open Puzzle Solving Championship by solving all 10 puzzles correctly in a record 90 seconds!
Luke just became a National Master rated 2204 this past weekend in Washington, DC. Congratulations to Luke! Well done!
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
I have the same book. The one and two move checkmate puzzles are too easy for me, so I only do the three move checkmate ones. Solving these puzzles is a great thing to do when I am in a long flight, where everyone is treated as pets in a cage and has nowhere to go and nothing to do but eat pet foods.
I have that book too! It’s a great book of chess puzzles that have enabled me to find a great sequence of moves much faster that would lead to a mate, a trapped piece or a better exchange 4 or 5 moves later…
SK
hehe, well yall good i seen that book with all thoses tricky puzzles so i started running! This kid is a master at 11 years youn its time to for me to go Susan Um not dealing with all that, so Susan let me ask a ? if ya take their world title away the top tricksters dont have anything to hide behind right?
“Vellotti” sounds very much Italian. Does he have some Italian relations too? It would be definitely a good omen! Best wishes little-big Luke!!!
Congratulations on making it successfully through what we affectionately call “The Brick” around here, go Luke! Don’t know if I’ll ever see the other side of this beast but it’s been and I’m sure will continue to be loads of fun trying–thanks Papa Polgar!
Wow that was nice. Anyway where I can get the book?
Feel like I am too old to master the chess…
A chess master at eleven years old? Who trains Luke? It’s got to hard to get a qualified coach in Idaho.
I think he’s trained by Mike Gold, an old master from Ohio. He doesn’t play OTB tournaments anymore but still shows up at Idaho tournaments from time to time. I’ve seen him analyse a few games. He’s still got it.