Find the right combination! ChessBase 15 program + new Mega Database 2020 with 8 million games and more than 80,000 master analyses. Plus ChessBase Magazine (DVD + magazine) and CB Premium membership for 1 year!

Find the right combination! ChessBase 15 program + new Mega Database 2020 with 8 million games and more than 80,000 master analyses. Plus ChessBase Magazine (DVD + magazine) and CB Premium membership for 1 year!

8/8/2018 – We have been trying to keep track of incredible playing strength and title wins at a very early age. It started with Capablanca and Reshevsky, and today we are seeing full grandmasters aged thirteen — and in two cases twelve! Most recently it was Pragnanandhaa, who achieved the title at twelve years and ten months. It became time to update our prodigy page, with better graphics and a few telling graphs. We also invite our readers to contribute.

Young talents get younger

Child prodigies are a well-known phenomenon in chess, which is one of the few sports or intellectual activities where children can compete with adults on equal ground (another is computer games). The great Capablanca learned the game at four, and was one of the strongest players in Cuba in his early teens.

In the picture at right you see the four-year-old José Raúl playing against his father, José María Capablanca Fernández, soon after learning the moves in 1892.

Samuel Reshevsky also started at four and was giving simultaneous exhibitions at six. He played thousands of exhibition games in the USA throughout his childhood. From the age of eight, he gave simuls around the world.

In the picture at left you see Sammy Reshevsky playing Charles Jaffe at 11. He tied for third with Janowski, Bigelow and Bernstein.



Youngest grandmasters

Chess Prodigies Uncovered: Sergey Karjakin Experience the meteoric rise of the youngest Grandmaster of all time into the world elite in specially selected master games. IM D'Costa presents brilliant victories in a new interactive training format with video feedback!

In recent times we have seen the record for youngest grandmaster in the history of the game topple repeatedly. In 1991 Judit Polgar broke Bobby Fischer's 33-year-old mark by becoming a grandmaster a month earlier than he had done. In 1994 her record was broken by fellow-Hungarian Peter Leko, who a short time later was overtaken by Ukrainian Ruslan Ponomariov. The latter went on to become FIDE World Champion in the 2002 knockout tournament. In 2001, 14-year-old prodigy Teimour Radjabov, who hails from the same town as Garry Kasparov (Baku), became the second-youngest grandmaster in history.

But all these records were shattered on August 12, 2002, when Sergey Karjakin (pictured) of Ukraine fulfilled his final grandmaster norm at the age of 12 years and seven months (4595 days). He did so at the international chess tournament in Sudak, a town on the Crimea Peninsula. His FIDE rating at the time was 2523.

In the same year, Karjakin became one of the seconds of Ponomariov. This was another record he achieved before he had reached his teens. Although we must be cautious with such statements one must assume that his records will not be broken.

Master Class Vol.8: Magnus Carlsen Scarcely any world champion has managed to captivate chess lovers to the extent Carlsen has. The enormously talented Norwegian hasn't been systematically trained within the structures of a major chess-playing nation such as Russia, the Ukraine or China.

One extraordinary chess prodigy came close. In 2004 Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who is nine months younger than Karjakin, completed his GM norms eight months later than his rival had done.

Carlsen, who at 18 trained for a while with Kasparov, went on to become the top-ranked player in the world, crossing the magic 2800 mark as the youngest player by far to achieve both these feats.

Since Carlsen, five other players even younger have successfully achieved the qualifications for the GM title.

Most recently, Dommaraju Gukesh from India who qualified for the GM-title on January 15th, 2019 when he was 4614 days old (19 days more than Karjakin).

Time to update our overview:

Youngest grandmasters in history

Below we have compiled a list of the youngest grandmasters in history. In the future, we may be updating this list, as new GMs under 15 years of age emerge.

Top Juniors

Apart from the age at which they became grandmasters we are also interested in the question or how strong the juniors were at different ages. Garrett Kingman, who is an undergraduate at Harvard University studying and regenerative biology, prepared the following illuminating graph for us:

Young GM rating progress before the age of 21

As we can see Magnus Carlsen was the highest ever rated starting from the age of fifteen. Anish Giri is the second-strongest sixteen-year-old in history, Sergey Karjakin the third strongest. From then on it is Karjakin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Fabiano Caruana battling for the rank of second, third and fourth strongest 17- and 18-year-olds.

FIDE rating of top players by age (July 2018)

Comparison of recent young prodigies ratings progression

How does Praggnanandhaa compare to the two ultra-prodigies? He's still ahead of Carlsen, and just shy of Karjakin at the age of thirteen.

Players at the 2018 Leon Masters tournament

Above you see Spain's number one, Francisco Vallejo Pons, rated 2707; Wesley So, world number six and currently rated 2780 (but with an all-time high of 2822 in Feb./March 2017); and Jaime Santos Latasa, 22, GM and one of Spain's top talents. Wait, hang on, who's the little guy between Wesley and Jaime? That's Pragg, whom Wesley beat by the slimmest of margins in Rapid Chess, where So is the second highest rated player in the world.

Ratings progression of So, Giri and Hou Yifan

Former women's world champion Hou Yifan was better than Anish Giri and Wesley So at the age of thirteen, but the two male players have caught up and moved into the Elo stratosphere. It is worth mentioning that Judit Polgar was rated a whopping 2555 at the age of twelve, after her unbelievable 2694 performance at the Olympiad. We also believe that she was the youngest top 100 player in history.

Judit Polgar's dominance of women's chess back in 2006

Other famous chess prodigies and records

Here are a few other names, facts and records of interest:

Thanks to James Satrapa of Canberra, Australia, provided us with the data of additional players we had missed in an earlier update: Yangyi Yu of China, Le Quang Liem of Vietnam, Yaroslav Zherebukh and Andrei Volokitin of Ukraine and Samvel Ter-Sahakyan of Armenia, and Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany and Daniil Dubov of Russia. All have been duly added to our list. We welcome additions and corrections by our readers.

Update: August 16, 2018 — Added American Samuel Sevian, who was previously missing from our list.

Update: September 7, 2018 — Added Indians Aravindh Chithambaran Vr. and Arjun Erigaisi and American Ruifeng Li

Update: October 18, 2018 — Added Javokhir Sindarov from Uzbekistan at number two. He qualified for the GM title just three days ahead of Pragnanandhaa!

Update: January 15, 2019 — Added D. Gukesh from India at number two, who earned his third GM norm at the 2019 Delhi GM Open.