INTERNATIONAL GRANDMASTER
Since 1950 when FIDE introduced the formal title International Grandmaster, similar titles have been created for correspondence chess and for chess composition. The word became more popular in the early 20th century when tournaments were sometimes designated grandmaster events, e.g. Ostend in 1907 and San Sebastian in 1912. At that time a Grandmaster was someone who might sensibly be considered as a challenger for the world championship. FIDE’s International Grandmaster title requires a player to satisfy carefully laid out achievement levels like three norms in tournaments and an ELO equivalent to 2500 or to win world or continental championships. By the end of 2010, there are 1301 International Grandmasters titles and 414 International Women Grandmasters titles in the FIDE ranking list. Bobby Fischer held the record for youngest Grandmaster at 15 years, 6 months, 1 day for 34 years until his record was broken by Judit Polgar. These days the average year for prodigy GMs are 14 years old!
Name |
Date of Birth |
Age at time of final |
Year of Title |
Bobby Fischer |
(1943.03.09) |
15 years, 6 months, 1 day |
1958 |
Judit Polgar |
(1976.07.23) |
15 years, 4 months, 28 days |
1992 |
Koneru Humpy |
(1987.03.31) |
15 years, 4 months, 27 days |
2002 |
Hikaru Nakamura |
(1987.12.09) |
15 years, 2 months, 19 days |
2003 |
Ray Robson |
(1994.10.25) |
14 years, 11 months, 16 days |
2009 |
Fabiano Caruana |
(1992.07.10) |
14 years, 11 months, 20 days |
2007 |
Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son |
(1990.02.23) |
14 years, 10 months |
2005 |
Dariusz Świercz |
(1994) |
14 years, 4 months, 29 days |
2009 |
Yuriy Kuzubov |
(1990.01.26) |
14 years, 7 months, 12 days |
2004 |
Anish Giri |
(1994.06.28) |
14 years, 7 months, 02 days |
2009 |
Hou Yifan |
(1994.02.27) |
14 years, 6 months, 16 days |
2008 |
Peter Leko |
(1979.09.08) |
14 years, 4 months, 22 days |
1994 |
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave |
(1990.10.21) |
14 years, 4 months |
2005 |
Etienne Bacrot |
(1983.01.22) |
14 years, 2 months, 0 days |
1997 |
Wesley So |
(1993.10.09) |
14 years 1 month, 28 days |
2007 |
Ruslan Ponomariov |
(1983.10.11) |
14 years, 0 months, 17 days |
1998 |
Teimour Radjabov |
(1987.03.12) |
14 years, 0 month, 14 days |
2001 |
Richard Rapport |
(1996.03.25) |
13 years, 11 months, 6 days |
2010 |
Bu Xiangzhi |
(1985.12.10) |
13 years, 10 months, 13 days |
2000 |
Magnus Carlsen |
(1990.11.30) |
13 years, 4 months, 27 days |
2004 |
Parimarjan Negi |
(1993.02.09) |
13 years, 4 months, 22 days |
2006 |
Sergey Karjakin |
(1990.01.12) |
12 years, 7 months, 0 days |
2003 |
