Faustino Oro, the 10-year-old Argentine boy who some time ago moved to Spain to enhance his talent and shore up his promising career in chess, struck the blow this Sunday by beating the world number one, Magnus Carlsen, in a bullet game.
Oro and Carlsen faced off at Bullet Bral 2024, an open competition of ultra-fast games played online in which each player has a total of one minute to move their pieces and try to beat their rival.
The Argentine, with an ELO rating of 2330, played with white pieces and beat the Norwegian grandmaster (2830) in 48 moves to round off a historic victory in his incipient adventure on the boards.
“I’m very happy; “A great joy for me because I had never played against him,” Oro told the Spanish press after achieving a victory that he will never forget.
Oro finished in 21st place in this contest, whose winner was the American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, the best in the specialty whom Oro had defeated on Saturday, followed by the Mexican José Martínez Alcántara and the also American Daniel Naroditsky . In total 156 players participated.
Oro was looking forward to playing Carlsen for the first time and this Sunday he had the opportunity. And he didn’t let her pass. He started well planted, with an opening that left him better positioned. He even said: “If I lose in this position I have to retire from chess.” However, Carlsen, five-time world champion until he decided not to defend the title anymore – now in the hands of the Chinese Ding Liren – reacted and not only balanced the game, but also began to have a dominant position. Not in vain is it also a phenomenon in rapid chess and blitz mode.
Faustino seemed resigned until he perceived a mistake on the part of his award-winning adversary and did not ignore it. “Let’s go,” he murmured first and almost didn’t notice when Carlsen, with no chance of repairing his mistake and with fewer pieces, gave up.
“I beat Carlsen,” he said in disbelief. The Argentine, however, did not have time to celebrate, since he immediately had to start playing against another rival. These are these ultra-fast tournaments in which analysis takes a backseat and intuition is quoted on the stock market.
Alejandro Oro and Romina Simondi knew that this moment would come one day. A life decision, those that are only made after thinking about them too much, awaited them sooner or later. Both accountants with executive positions in top companies realized this year that everything would happen sooner than they had thought. The time for the final talk arrived and they agreed on the tremendous swerve. He resigned from his management at Laboratorios Bagó after 12 years. She resigned from Tecpetrol one month after turning 21 at the Techint group company. They packed their suitcases and on Tuesday, December 5, 2023, they arrived in Spain. Of course, this family story is missing a protagonist. The central actor: Faustino, his 10-year-old son who turned 10 last October. The thing is that the family made such a life decision so that Fausti, the precocious genius of world chess, could rub shoulders with the elite.
This is how it reads: the Oros left their comfortable life in Buenos Aires in pursuit of the dream of that short guy who behind his glasses hides a roguish face from a novel and who has monumental talent in a small package. The great Argentine masters agree that they have never seen anything like it in their lives. A star who, by scandal, is number one in the world at his age and who can cope not only with any position on the board but also has a devastating winning mentality.
“We knew that when Fausti passed 2,300 ELO points, the only way he would have to progress was to play against tougher opponents. And since in Argentina there are very few grandmasters who compete in the country, there is no other way than to play abroad. In Spain there are many tournaments and from here the travel distances to other countries are reduced,” Alejandro detailed to journalist Hernán Sartori from Spain.
The family ended up in that country with one hand behind and one hand forward, without jobs but with the community passport of father and son. “We came with our savings and for now we pretend that we are on vacation, although the idea is for me to get a job here, because although I have the chance to work remotely for Argentina, the exchange rate difference would not favor me,” Alejandro explained. harshly at the end of last year.
The entire family project is based on the future of Fausti, who has just finished fourth grade at the school where he attended a single day to have the afternoon free to study chess. “We told ourselves that if we don’t give Fausti the opportunities, he was born into the wrong family,” the father confesses. There we had comforts and here we can do without many things. The only condition is not to break up the family or for one to go on tour with him for five months and the other to stay at home. The objective is that it can develop. Being here is the best way to face much tougher rivals to try to reach the chess elite. And for us it would have been impossible to invest $3,000 for each trip abroad with him being in Argentina.”
