Sindarov Likely Becomes 'New' 2nd-Youngest GM In History

It took 16 years after Sergey Karjakin became a grandmaster at 12 years old for another person to earn the highest title in chess before turning 13.

But now, four months after Indian prodigy Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa became the second 12-year-old in history to become a grandmaster, a third pre-teen GM has likely appeared. Although not official, IM Javokhir Sindarov of Tashkent, Uzbekistan seems to have earned his third and final norm at the most recent edition of the First Saturday Tournament in Budapest (Chess.com has scrutinized the three events in question and cannot find any obvious reason FIDE would not accept the norm applications).

Sindarov, born in 2005, is less than two years older than the iPhone.

At the monthly event in Hungary, which is surely responsible for more norms than any other series in the world, Sindarov lost in round one but then scored an impressive 7.0/8 in his remaining games to tie for first. He needed pretty much every one of those points for his 2619 performance rating.

From left to right: Grandfather (and first coach!) Dr. Kamil Sindarov, FM Manush Shah, IM Javokhir Sindarov, IO Laszlo Nagy (organizer of First Saturday events). Photo courtesy Laszlo Nagy. 

Sindarov was ranked second out of the 10 players, but importantly for the title, he began the event with exactly a 2500 rating, the minimum required for GM (he also picked up 13 more points in the effort).

The nine-round event ran from October 6-16. Since Sindarov was born December 8, 2005, that makes him 12 years, 10 months, and eight days old when fulfilling his final requirement for GM. That is exactly five days earlier than Praggnanandhaa was able to do it.

Sindarov's norms all came within a torrid four-month span, but Karjakin's record is still safe.

Youngest Grandmasters Of All Time

Sindarov was not dismayed after starting with a loss. Instead he won this crazy game as Black where pretty much every one of his pieces was placed en prise at some point. It also set up a theme for his tournament: pawns > pieces for the Uzbek wunderkind.

He went a perfect 3-0 against the trio of GMs in the field. Funnily enough, Sindarov won two of them as Black, and in both he preferred collections of pawns instead of pieces.

Here's round four:

And here's round six, another GM scalp as Black in less than 30 moves:

This third norm combines with two earlier norms. Sindarov's first came at the Alekhine Memorial in June of this year. Then at the end of the summer, Sindarov got his second at the FIDE World Junior Championship (where his rating also jumped from 2484 to 2500 exactly). Although his TPR there was below 2600, it was an 11-round event, and if you take his results from rounds 1-9, he did play the minimum number of GMs from enough federations and his score of 6.0/9 equated to a 2616 TPR, above the 2600 threshold needed for a norm.

Javokhir getting a supportive tap on his head from the Uzbek Chess Federation 1st vice-president Husan Turdialiev. | Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.

His title is not official until conferred by FIDE, but assuming it is, the date of final norm is used for purposes of record-keeping. The future seems bright for Uzbekistan. If you can believe it, Sindarov is not even the highest-rated sub-15-year-old in his own country! Fellow countryman GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov is just barely 14 himself and creeping toward 2600.