Illinoisans David Peng and Aydin Turgut are among 70 youth from the United States now in Durban, South Africa competing in the 2014 World Youth Championships. The tournament begins September 20th and continues through September 29th.

Candidate Master Peng (FIDE 2011) is competing against 111 others, including a dozen entrants from the US, in the U12 Open section of the tournament. Top rated in that section is Wisconsan Awonder Liang (FIDE 2323). Peng won the U10 Open section silver medal, behind Liang, at the 2013 World Youth Championships in the United Arab Emirates.

Turgut (FIDE 1851) is the official US representative in the U10 Open section, competing in his third World Youth Championships. His FIDE rating places him 14th among all competitors, second amongst Americans behind Californian Andrew Hong.

There are high hopes for both of Illinois’ representatives at the World Youth Championships.

US coaches for the 70 US competitors will be led by Michael Khodarkovsky and FM Aviv Friedman, and include GMs Sam Palatnik, John Fedorowicz, Nick deFirmian, and Ben Finegold, and IMs Armen Ambartsoumian and Andranik Matikozyan.

 

Update: After three of 11 rounds, Aydin Turgut is holding strong with one of three perfect 3.0 scores in his U10 section. Aydin is paired against Kazakhstan's Kazybek Nogerbek in round four.

In U12, David Peng has posted two wins but fell to Uzbekistan's Nodirbek Yakubboev in the third round. The fourth round finds David paired against Switzerland's Daniel Fischer.

Along with Aydin, WFM Jennifer Yu (Virginia), Vignesh Panchanatham (California) and FM Awonder Liang (Wisconsin) are the only four Americans still with perfect scores.