Colas wins Polgar’s World Open!

Josh Colas (middle) flanked by father Guy Colas and GM Susan Polgar.

“Joshu-Kid” is growing up fast. Over the weekend, 14-year old Joshua Colas has already gotten a university scholarship to attend Susan Polgar’s highly-touted program at Webster University. Webster University houses the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence, or SPICE.

This past weekend, he won the High School section at the SP World Open with a perfect 6-0 score. That’s not all. He finished 2nd in the SP World Open Puzzle Solving Championship, scoring 19/20 and won the SP World Open Blitz Championship 5-0 score!

With his victory in the open, he wins a $92,000 scholarship to Webster University. Josh is a high school freshman and has stated elsewhere that he would like to enter a professional field such as accounting. With his work ethic and humble demeanor, he is poised to be successful at anything he chooses. His proud father Guy Colas made note of the warmest congratulations from Polgar herself…

Congratulations to Joshua! I am so proud of him. He worked hard and improved so much from the days when he competed at the Polgar Chess Center in Forest Hills, NY. Hard work does pay off. In spite of his success, Joshua is very well mannered and humble young man. Big credit to his parents for raising him the right way.

Well said! 😀

Senior Master Josh Colas in action!
Photos by FM Paul Truong.

Results: https://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2012/10/and-winners-are.html

18 Comments

  1. Amazing that Josh has reached the 2400-level and to see his progress. Hard not to be happy for him. He has a great family and is growing up to be a fine young man.

    I like the new glasses! 😎

  2. This young man is a tremendous example for many others to emulate. We here in Jamaica are truly proud of him. His achievements, including gaining this fairly substantial scholarship, must be appreciated. His progress must be applauded with due respect and recognition given to his support “staff” led by his family, particularly his omnipresent father. The future is truly pregnant with the promise of even greater things.

  3. Congrat for a great job Josh! I wonder how much of his talent is natural application vs. simply plain hard work. Anyway with his type of talent I think there a a great many fields open to his career aspirations.

    1. Josh can do whatever he puts his mind to. Many of the earlier Black masters excelled in physics, mathematics and computer systems. It appears that strong chess players have a strength in those analytical subjects.

  4. Cleveland, first I want to thank you for your acknowledgement of Joshua’s deeds. If you’ve been observing my remarks about him over the years, you will have noticed that I am an extremely supportive and proud parent. There’s a reason. Joshua has been doing all these wonderful things with 95 % raw talent and 5 % percent training. He complements his lack of book study by playing tons of blitz game on ICC. He occasionally trains online with a GM when he has games to review. Hard to believe but those are the facts. In essence we are only getting a foretaste of what he’s really capable of doing. BTW, I really appreciate the support from the Jamaican chess association! Big Up Ian!

  5. Guy,

    I have made many comments on different blogs about this ICC method (also used by Hikaru Nakamura). The massive amount of trial and error done when playing blitz can be instructional if used efficiently. Of course, Nakamura was nearly unbeatable on the ICC, but when he reached elite level, some of his shortcomings in the openings showed. I hope Josh learns from this and have more focus on specific aspects of his game.

  6. Congrats Josh! Breaking out the brooms! sweeping the regular chess players, the blitz chess players, and coming within 1 of sweeping the puzzle solving!

    I’m happy that you will be going to a University program where you will still intensively pursue chess. That’s the thing that makes me apprehensive when rising chess stars graduate high school.

  7. Hi Josh, Congratulations goes out to you from all of us at KIDS CHESS ACADEMY , Trinidad .Keep up the great work!!

  8. On behalf of all of us at Chess Challenge in DC, I want to congratulate you, Josh, on this tremendous accomplishment! You are a remarkable young man and we are so proud to know you. Kudos to your dad, too, for the encouragement he has shown you.

  9. I want to thank all the people who have taken a minute of their time to congratulate me. I am so happy to see that even the people as far as from Jamaica and Trinidad are also cheering for me on.

    Thank you.

  10. Hey Josh,

    Even this low rated player close to you in Connecticut want to congratulate you for your performance. Maybe one day I’ll have the honor of becoming one of your victims. LOL.

    Take care,
    Quentin

  11. Congratulations Joshua and Colas Family! Keep on movin’ and
    pursue your dreams.
    Best,
    Kimani A. Stancil

  12. I try to always give credit where credit is due. However, I am not one to shy from speaking my mind when it’s appropriate. The KCF (Kasparov Chess Foundation) together with St Louis Chess Club have joined together to help spruce up America’s future Elite Grandmasters. That’s a great undertaking. Indeed, they have selected eight extremely gifted youngsters. Nonetheless, I candidly feel that they should have included at least one of our boys in that crowd. Not because of affirmative action, but because they are just as good as the other boys that were selected. That is why I am so appreciative that the boys do have an excellent and balance website (chess drum) where they can always go to and be reminded that someone is looking out for them. The good thing is that, there are few others besides the chess drum who are also keeping tabs on them. In any case, I believe in the end, they will get what they deserve.

  13. I am not certain if the selection was made based on a specific criterion. But,, based on what I have read, including Greg Shahade’s articulate piece on “The State of young American Chess Talent,” on the USCF website, it appears that the selection was based on few things: age, rating and accomplishments.

    1. I just posted that piece on the Facebook page. It only talks about how improvement has been seen in the past five years and only talks about four players of the eight players.

      There will be many other opportunities coming.

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