Any grandmasters who started late?

Sultan Khan

Tad argumentative for someone who neglected to address McDonnell.

What context am I missing here? It feels like me just answering OP's question was somehow a personal attack on you that you needed to try to refute somehow.

Honestly, McDonnell was from a different time which isn't relevant in todays world full of pre-teen IMs.

Context is this whole thread, where the question is more or less if there are some GMs who learned later in life (at least teen) and a lot of answers are "sure, just look at this one who learned chess when he/she/it was five". In reality, most (90 - 99%) GMs today are people who learned and played chess as kids.

At best we either have some players who did learn as late teen - young adult or as the case above your post, with Sultan Khan. He did learn european chess at +21... but he already knew indian chess since he was nine and was a master of that variation at the time of learning. Similar to Ye Jiangchuan who did learn european chess at 17 but already played chinese variation since at least 14. And I doubt that both of them were playing chess casually as their part time entertainment.

You're going to have to justify dismissing McDonnell out of hand like that. Look at his games and tell me he wouldn't be a grandmaster today.

I won't even pretend to be knowledgeable enough about chess to pick someones level of play from their games. Maybe he would have been a GM, maybe IM or maybe he wouldn't be playing at all.

But I do know that comparing legends from long before (sometime it could be from 30 - 50 years ago depending on how mature the sport/activity was at the time compared to now) is never a good idea when answering questions about today. Sure, with decent wrestling and bjj you could have won a couple UFC in the beginning but how will it help today? If Chess boxing ever become big, we can all watch the first champions in the early 00's and wonder "wait you could get a title with that level of boxing and chess?".

There was someone who started at age of 17 or 18, and not only he became GM, but also became rank #2 in his country.

I just can't even comprehend how you can seriously put forth the thesis that maybe McDonnell wasn't an extraordinary player. If he had begun learning chess at 27 years old in today's world rather than the 1800's, he would only stand to benefit from the resources, tools, and theoretical advancements we have today that make all the "pre-teen IMs" possible in the first place - they wouldn't somehow make him worse.

I'll never understand the lengths some will go to to diminish someone else's accomplishments. McDonnell was a phenomenal player and evidence enough that at least someone with a natural talent for the game does not need to be a child prodigy to achieve mastery.

Does that mean most adult learners could follow his footsteps? Of course not, but that isn't unique to adult learners. For every Magnus there are thousands of children being optimistically taught how to play chess who will never achieve anything in chess.

Grandmasters are born at the nexus of talent and obsession - and most obsessive personalities find their obsessions early in life, but it is not a steadfast law of the universe.

@not_theface : Pretty funny how you first called me out on "It feels like me just answering OP's question was somehow a personal attack on you that you needed to try to refute somehow." and then treating my dismissal of trying to compare players from 200 years ago as some kind of personal attack on that player.

What is interesting is that most of adult learners who became high level players is more common in earlier days of chess and less common today, even though we have much better resources for adult learners. This would correlate with my previous post about early ufc vs today: it is easier to get to the top when the sport is still immature and haven't gone through "standardization" of skills which are needed for everyone. Good luck finding any *relevant* competitive activity today which has lower skill level than 100 - 300 years ago, as long as it is still popular and not something that is just kept alive by small number of hobbyist.

Ben Finegold attained the GM title at age 40, but he played at GM strength for quite a few yers before he was able to get the required number on GM norms. At one point he was probably the strongest IM in America. Finegold became a USCF Master at age 14 and an International Master at age 20

The only pretty contemporary GM (1950's on) that was truly an adult beginner (and not a mere class player in their teens) and wasnt highly capable at some closely related game chinese or indian chess that i can find is.....
Mihai Suba from Romania who supposely learned to play at age 19. but the fact he is the only one i can find meeting such extraordinary criteria and i only find one source for that claim, makes me question its veracity. Maybe it was a translation error where "learned to play" meant started taking chess seriously outside club competition at age 19 but was likely a club level pawn pusher in his teens.
I hope someone asks him to clarify on this while he is still around. he is 75. I would love to know if this truly is the mythical achievement it seems to be or if Suba was the man of chess geriatric prophecy.

you are talking about chess in its absolute infancy. Mcdonnell predated the romantic chess era. Do you think philidor was GM level too? Truth is, anyone with a high intelligence and the desire to devote oneself to this game others saw as a curious form of gambling could have gone in the history books in the 1700's.
This isnt to insult his achievements players like philidor, la bourdaneis and Mcdonnell were treading very deep waters with only a paddle. their trial and error shaped play for generations to come but the feats they had are not impressive by today's standard. In philidors era blindfold chess was seen as an extraordinary ability whereas today your average expert at a chess club can usually play at least one blind game at a time just on the level of exposure they have to the game .
would they have been GM's today if they were brought up with all the resources of today quite probably but how far chess gets is notoriously difficult to predict. Reti could play 27 games blind in a row but was merely good enough to be a top 10 player. Ray robson 
was expected to be the fischer and he peaked at 2700. Lots of extremely talented player plateau at IM 
or even up being 2400 FM's.

me

Wish I could peak at 2700

how do you write that big bro