Park Slope-Raised Chess Player To Compete For World Championship

PARK SLOPE, NY — A Park Slope raised grandmaster, who learned the game at a local synagogue, will play for the world chess championship this fall, the first American to compete for the title since the 70s.

Fabiano Caruana won a candidates tournament on Tuesday in Berlin to get the right to play against current champion Magnus Carlsen in London in the fall, the Guardian reported.

Caruana became the first player born in America to win or even get the chance to play in the world championship since Bobby Fischer won the title in 1972.

He'll face off against the reigning champion Carlsen, who has held the title since 2013, in a best of 12 match starting on Nov. 28 in London, according to the Guardian. The two have played 30 times before in similar games and Carlsen leads nine to five over Caruana with 16 draws, according to Chessgames.com.

Caruana, 25, was born in Miami but moved to Park Slope when he was four, ChessBase reported. His parents enrolled him in an after-school program at Congregation Beth Elohim when he was five where he learned the game. He played in his first tournament at the Susan Polgar Chess Center in Queens.

In 2004, when he was 12, he left the borough and moved to Europe with his family to get access to the strong coaches and tournaments there, the New York Times reported. He became a grandmaster when he was 15 in 2007.

Caruana competed internationally for Italy from 2005 until 2015, when he switched to America and moved to St. Louis, a chess hub in the country.

Former world champion Garry Kasparov praised Caruana for the win and wrote he was "the most stable ship in a stormy sea" at the tournament on Twitter.

"Unlike Fischer's solo rise, Caruana becoming challenger crowns the overall chess improvement in the USA over the past decade-plus," Kasparov wrote.

Image: Sebastian Reuter/Getty Images for World Chess