Hussain Besou is just eleven years and seven months old. But in the world of chess, the refugee boy living in Lippstadt is already a big one. Because Besou is about to make his debut in the German national team.
“He will be used in April at the Mitropa Cup in Croatia,” confirmed Paul Meyer-Dunker, spokesman for the German Chess Federation, on Friday to WDR. This would make Besou the youngest German national player in the history of the association.
Vincent Keymer, who was twelve years and ten months old when he made his first DSB appearance, holds this record so far. And Matthias Blübaum, last year’s European champion, was almost two years older when he was nominated for the first time in 2011.
From refugee child to national chess player
Besou came to Germany as a Syrian refugee at the age of five. Even then he loved chess, played for hours on his laptop. Young national coach Bernd Vökler still remembers his first encounter with the boy – Besou was seven years old at the time. “I immediately noticed Hussain at the Junior European Championships in Riga,” Vökler tells WDR. “He didn’t have any technology yet, but he could calculate at lightning speed.”
Hussain Besou at the award ceremony
A lot has happened in the life of the Lippstadt student since then. At the age of nine he became German champion for the first time and won the bronze medal at the past youth world championships. Besou recently made “a big leap” again, Vökler praised his protégé, who is second in the current U12 world rankings.
Besou has big goals
If nothing unforeseen happens, Besou will now play in the Mitropa Cup in Croatia in April. Ten nations have been competing against each other every year for more than four decades at the traditional tournament. Although Vökler did not want to hide the fact that this year clashing dates will ensure that Germany cannot arrive with the best cast, Besou nevertheless deserved his chance in the national team.
The ambitious youngster has set equal goals for his debut. By doing well at the tournament, he would like to meet the norm of “International Champion” – an intermediate step on the way to the aspired grandmaster title. Of course, Vökler would be happy about that, but he would also be satisfied with smaller successes: “I hope that he will play his game consistently and win a game or two.”
Irrespective of the result, Vökler is certain: Hussain Besou will make some of world chess look old in the next few years.
