Friday 23 October 2009

What were you doing at their age?

How old were the youngest players when they first became chess grandmasters? This list appeared on Susan Polgar's blog on 17 Oct 2009 and since then, has been picked up all over the world, the latest of which was by an old Filipino chess friend, Bobby Ang, who had it published in the Business World Online in the Philippines today.

Since the days of Bobby Fischer -- he became the world's youngest grandmaster in 1959 -- the ages of the youngest grandmasters have been tumbling. Here is the list, with my own additions:

1. (GM 2002) Sergey Karjakin, 12 years, 7 months, 0 days
2. (GM 2006) Parimarjan Negi, 13 years, 4 months, 22 days
3. (GM 2004) Magnus Carlsen, 13 years, 4 months, 27 days
4. (GM 1999) Bu Xiangzhi, 13 years, 10 months, 13 days
5. (GM 2001) Teimour Radjabov, 14 years, 0 months, 14 days
6. (GM 1998) Ruslan Ponomariov, 14 years, 0 months, 17 days
7. (GM 2008) Wesley So, 14 years, 1 month, 28 days
8. (GM 1997) Etienne Bacrot, 14 years, 2 months, 0 days
9. (GM 2005) Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, 14 years, 4 months
10. (GM 1994) Péter Lékó, 14 years, 4 months, 22 days
11. (GM 2009) Hou Yifan, 14 years, 6 months, 16 days
12. (GM 2009) Anish Giri, 14 years, 7 months, 2 days
13. (GM 2005) Yuriy Kuzubov, 14 years, 7 months, 12 days
14. (GM 2009) Dariusz Swiercz, 14 years, 7 months, 29 days
15. (GM 2004) Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, 14 years, 10 months
16. (GM 2009) Ray Robson, 14 Years, 11 Months, 15 days / 16 days
17. (GM 2007) Fabiano Caruana, 14 years, 11 months, 15 days / 20 days
18. (GM 2002) Humpy Koneru, 15 years, 1 month, 27 days
19. (GM 2003) Hikaru Nakamura, 15 years, 2 months, 19 days
20. (GM 2001) Pentala Harikrishna, 15 years, 3 months, 5 days
21. (GM 1991) Judit Polgar, 15 years, 4 months, 28 days
22. (GM 2004) Alejandro Ramirez, 15 years, 5 months, 14 days
23. (GM 1958) Bobby Fischer, 15 years, 6 months, 1 day

Hou Yifan, Humpy Koneru and Judit Polgar hold both the Grandmaster title (for all genders) and the Woman Grandmaster title.

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