GM-Elect Ray Robson!

The young American chess player, Ray Robson (pictured), has just achieved his third and final GM-norm result, and therefore qualifies as a Grandmaster at just 14 years, 11 months and 16 days!

It's a close run thing, but it looks like Robson might therefore become the youngest American GM in history, just beating Fabiano Caruana's record by a few days [UPDATE - this has been disputed, it's too close to call!].  Bobby Fischer was a comparatively mature 15 years and 6 months when he became a GM.

Robson just missed out last month during Susan Polgar's SPICE competition, but he dominated the field in Panamerican Junior Championship to win with a score of 7.5/8, his only draw coming in the last round to secure the title.

Robson's game against GM Andre Diamant is below.

Just in case all this talk of chess prodigies in the news leads us old folks to believe we are over the hill, let's remember that last month another US player finally achieved the GM title at the tender age of 40.  Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Ben Finegold is a Grandmaster.

Ben Finegold (picture from the Ben Finegold blog)

Congratulations to both Ben and Ray!