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Ray Robson is the new youngest GM

PeterDoggers
| 0 | Chess Event Coverage
Ray RobsonAnish Giri could enjoy the title for about eight months, but now there's a new youngest grandmaster in the world: Ray Robson from the USA. By winning the Panamerican Junior Championship in Montevideo, Uruguay Robson clinched his 3rd GM norm, just 14 years 11 months and 16 days old.

GM-elect Ray Robson at the Panamerican Junior Championship in Montevideo, Uruguay

Ray Robson was born October 25th, 1994 in Guam, an island in the western Pacific Ocean and an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States. An only child, Ray learned the rules of chess at the age of 3, from his father Gary, a professor in applied linguistics. Ray's mother Yee-chen is a kindergarten teacher. Currently the family lives in Largo, Florida (USA).

Ray stepped into the limelight for the first time in April 2005, at the "Super Nationals" (the world's largest scholastic chess tournament) in Nashville, Tennessee. There he won all of his games and emerged as the national champion in the elementary age division. By winning this title, he earned a four-year scholarship covering full tuition and fees, along with a housing stipend, to the University of Texas (Dallas) - not bad for a 10-year-old (and no doubt very useful in later years).

In 2007 Robson earned his three IM norms in only six weeks: the first at the 6th North American FIDE Invitational on November 3, 2007, in Chicago, Illinois; the second on November 27 at the World Youth Chess Championship in Antalya, Turkey, and the third and final norm on (December 10) at the University of Texas GM Invitational in Dallas, Texas, making him the youngest IM-elect in the United States.

Ray Robson

On July 16, 2009, Robson became the youngest player ever to win the U.S. Junior Chess Championship and soon afterwards, just like his IM norms, the three GM norms were scored in a very short time frame. In August he tied for first at the Arctic Chess Challenge in Tromso, Norway, and in the same month Robson earned his second GM norm by winning the 23rd North American FIDE Invitational in Skokie, Illinois.

Last Sunday, Robson drew his game against Andres Gallego in round 8 of the Pan-American Junior Championship in Montevideo, Uruguay. This way he secured first place in the tournament as he had won his first seven games! Robson's dad Gary confirmed that for winning this tournament, Ray automatically earns a GM norm, despite the fact that he only played eight games against just one IM (Chami Luis Ibarra) and one GM (Andre Diamant).

Double-checking the FIDE Handbook we assume that the Panamerican Junior Championship falls in the same category as the "Continental U-20 ASEAN", the "Arab U-20", the "Centroamerican-Caribbean U-20" and the "Southern American U-20" mentioned in the table under 1.24 - tournaments where the gold medal equals a 9-game GM norm. (Not that we're questioning Ray's level or anything; so far he has beaten already five 2600+ players! See the game viewer below.)

Since Ray Robson's rating is already over 2500, he's now officially "GM-elect", and soon officially the youngest GM in the world. He beat Fabiano Caruana's record by four days, and also broke Nakamura's and Fischer's records to become the youngest American Grandmaster in history. [Update answering Thomas' remark: the First Saturday tournament where Fabiano scored his 3rd GM norm was in July 2007, so it started on Saturday, July 7th, 2007. It seems there wasn’t a rest day in that tournament and so the last round was played on Sunday, July 15th. His birthday is July 30th and if we assume he clinched the norm in the last round, he was in fact 14 years, 11 months and 15 days, just one day quicker than Ray! Besides, since Fabiano was a citizen of both the United States and Italy, he did break Nakamura’s record.]

No.
 Player
Nat.
Years
Months
Days
Year
 Sergey Karjakin
UKR
12
7
0
2002
 Parimarjan Negi
IND
13
3
22
2006
 Magnus Carlsen
NOR
13
3
27
2004
 Bu Xiangzhi
CHN
13
10
13
1999
 Teimour Radjabov
AZE
14
0
14
2001
 Ruslan Ponomariov 
UKR
14
0
17
1997
 Wesley So
PHI
14
1
28
2007
 Etienne Bacrot
FRA
14
2
0
1997
 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave
FRA
14
4
0
2005
10 
 Peter Leko
HUN
14
4
22
1994
11 
 Hou Yifan
CHN
14
6
2
2008
12 
 Anish Giri
RUS
14
7
2
2009
13 
 Yuri Kuzubov
UKR
14
7
12
2004
14 
 Dariusz Swiercz
POL
14
7
29
2004
15 
 Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son 
VIE
14
10
0
2004
16 
 Fabiano Caruana
ITA
14
11
15
2007
17 
 Ray Robson
USA
14
11
16
2009
18 
 Koneru Humpy
IND
15
1
27
2002
19 
 Hikaru Nakamura
USA
15
2
19
2003
20 
 Pentala Harikrishna
IND
15
3
5
2001
21
 Judit Polgar
HUN
15
4
28
1991
22
 Alejandro Ramirez
CRI
15
5
14
2003
23
 Bobby Fischer
USA
15
6
1
1958



Recently Ray Robson was interviewed by John Watson for almost an hour; Robson was the guest at the weekly Chess.FM show Chess Talk with Watson on September 8th. Robson tells about being coached by Gregory Kaidanov and Alexander Onischuk and reveals a bit about the mystery of chess improvement. For instance, Kaidanov gave him opening files and Dvoretsky puzzles, which Ray described as "hard to solve, but very helpful for me." His advice to young players: "Keep studying chess is the best way to improve. Different books, tactics, everyone can improve that way." And he confirmed the importance of tactics: "At the beginning I studied tactics a lot. I didn't really study positional chess until I was much higher rated." Later in the interview Ray mentioned "USCF, Chessbase, ChessVibes" as the chess websites he visits, so we'll take the opportunity: congratulations Ray!

Selection of Ray Robson's games



Game viewer by ChessTempo


Photos courtesy of the Jóvenes Promesas del Ajedrez Uruguayo blog

Links

PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms.

Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools.

Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013.

As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”

In October, Peter's first book The Chess Revolution will be published!


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