Complete list of late starting masters ?

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Avatar of ahinoki

 

 I have searched across the internet in hopes of finding master level players who started playing chess age 18+. I'm mainly interested in international masters and grandmasters, but candidate masters and FIDE masters I will add to the list.

Here it is

Mihai Suba - age 19 - peak rating 2580 ranked 21st in world Martin Weteschnik - age 25! - peak rating 2350 Johannes van der waal - 30's - peak rating 2250 Rani Hamid - age 34 - peak rating 2230 Joseph blackburne - age 18 Alexander McDonnell - age 27 Howard staunton - age 26 George salwe - age 20 Chigorin - age 24

A short list of only 9, but I suspect there maybe several more grandmasters and international masters who started late out of the thousands there have been throughout history and I suspect there to be many more FIDE masters and candidate masters. This data is hard to find though. As a note I do remember reading a book that talks about a study of 60 contemporary grandmasters and international masters and out of the 60 the latest age at which a player learned the game(how pieces move) was 16. This gives me hope as that's a small sample size(less than 1 percent of all grandmasters and international masters since elo system being implemented) and if Mihai Suba was able to reach the 21st spot in the world while starting at age 19 end there must be at least some international masters that started in their early to mid 20's."   Thanks for any names you can add.

Avatar of tygxc

There must be many Chinese players, who started with Chinese Chess and later picked up Chess.

Avatar of marqumax
Look up Akiba Rubinstein
Avatar of ahinoki

thanks, but i checked on rubinstein and he started at 14.

Avatar of ahinoki

bump

Avatar of medelpad

Nezmetdinov