Abhimanyu Mishra Youngest IM In History

Abhimanyu Mishra of New Jersey recently fulfilled all requirements for the International Master title at the age of 10 years, nine months and three days—younger than anyone else.

Mishra, who is often called "Abhi," broke the previous record held by the current world U18 champion Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu by 17 days.

Mishra scored his third IM norm earlier this month at the inaugural Chess Max Academy Fall Invitational, a round-robin organized by GM Maxim Dlugy's chess school in New York. The first norm was achieved in a similar round-robin this summer, and then Mishra scored his second at the Los Angeles Fall GM and IM Norm event.

Early achievements include silver medals in both the 2017 Pan American Youth Championship in Costa Rica and the 2017 World Cadet U8 Championship in Brazil. 

Mishra has worked with several coaches, including GMs Arun Prasad Subramanian and Magesh Panchanathan and WFM Anuprita Patil.

This summer Mishra participated in a three-day training course by 13th world champion Garry Kasparov via the Kasparov Chess Foundation. Mishra currently works with KCF head coach GM Alexander Chernin of Hungary.

Currently rated 2396, Mishra scored 4.5/9 and a 2456 performance at the Fall Invitational last week, where he drew all his games. He won 14.8 Elo points.

The tournament, won by IM Brandon Jacobson, included three grandmasters: Mark Paragua and Oliver Barbosa (both Philippines) and Leonid Yudasin (Israel). Chess.com received games against two of these GMs, annotated by Mishra.

In round five, Mishra achieved a draw with Barbosa by defending a slightly worse position into a knight endgame:

In the next round he drew Paragua as Black in a sharp Sicilian. A database search reveals that almost the whole game had been played before, but in his annotations Mishra says he was on his own from move 10:

Mishra's next world record attempt might be to try and beat Sergey Karjakin's record of youngest GM ever—12 years and seven months.