Caleb Levitan to represent SA in chess ‘world cup’

Thirteen-year-old Caleb Levitan will represent South Africa at the Chess Olympiad in September, which is like a World Cup chess team event, after placing second at the South African Closed Chess Championships this week.

Levitan, the youngest player ever to make the South African team, was one of the top 12 players in the country invited to this championship to contest for what is effectively the spot as the best chess player in South Africa.

The competition, from 25 March to 2 April, encompassed a round-robin format in which all of the players played each other. “It was pretty gruelling,” says Levitan’s dad, Shaun.

Levitan, in Grade 8 at King David High School Linksfield, set the record for the youngest player ever to have been selected to play in the championship. “The next youngest player, we were told, was a 15-year-old, some time back,” Shaun says.

“The tournament has the prestige of being the event used for all South African team selections. When I say South Africa, this isn’t a junior team, this is the South African chess team. This event is usually held every two years.” The players were competing to be one of the five players to represent South Africa at the 2024 Chess Olympiad in Budapest in September. “The Chess Olympiad is where every chess-playing nation has the right to send their team of five players for the premier chess competition around the world.”

Shaun says all the best chess players, such as Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and Italian and American chess grandmaster Fabiano Caruana will represent their respective countries in Budapest. “The World Cup for chess is an individual event, but this is like the World Cup team event.”

The first time Levitan played for South Africa was last month at the African Games in Ghana. He finished in the top 10 based on points.

Shaun says Caleb and his twin brother, Judah, who was awarded his Candidate Master title last November but didn’t get invited to Closed Chess Championships, have been doing excellently this year.

“Caleb’s rating now puts him somewhere close to the top five in the country. With the benefits of this tournament, I think the rest of the country has seen just how strong he is. A lot of his events are played overseas, and this was a South African event against the strongest players here. In fact, many of the opponents, who are South African legends or at least known by name, played him for the very first time.”

Levitan remained unbeaten in the competition all the way through to the final round. “I think it was just exhaustion, adrenaline, and perhaps the psychology of knowing he had qualified that made the final game just too much. There was a general sentiment of just how impressive it was, that people who would have expected to make the Olympiad team didn’t necessarily make it.

“For Caleb, this was really his first experience of playing in such a senior competition and to finish second says a huge amount not only about his talent but his ability to play under pressure,” Shaun says. “There’s obviously a huge psychological component to this type of competition, and we’re just very proud of him.”

Chess players don’t necessarily experience improvement immediately, Levitan says. “We measure strength by rating, and Caleb’s rating peaked last year at about 2 300. Then, at the start of this year, he was trying new things and experimenting a bit. It actually came down quite a bit and now it’s stabilising again and coming back up. He’s still young. He’s a little inconsistent, but still growing. There’s a fortune still to learn.”

It’s been said that chess isn’t always about winning. “Sometimes, it’s simply about learning. And so is life,” according to a quote on numerous websites.

On that note, Levitan has missed a ton of school, his dad says. “King David has been exceptionally supportive. He leads a dual lifestyle of being good enough to compete with the men’s team in South Africa in chess, but still has to go back and catch up with science and isiZulu.”

Levitan’s aspiration is to become an international master. “Hopefully he can do that either during the course of this year or next year,” Shaun says.