Ray Robson is the new youngest GM

Anish 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.



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
1	Sergey Karjakin	UKR	12	7	0	2002
2	Parimarjan Negi	IND	13	3	22	2006
3	Magnus Carlsen	NOR	13	3	27	2004
4	Bu Xiangzhi	CHN	13	10	13	1999
5	Teimour Radjabov	AZE	14	0	14	2001
6	Ruslan Ponomariov	UKR	14	0	17	1997
7	Wesley So	PHI	14	1	28	2007
8	Etienne Bacrot	FRA	14	2	0	1997
9	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

• Arctic Chess Challenge website
• 23rd North American FIDE Invitational
• Pan-American Junior Championship
• Selection of Robson games in PGN