Tata Steel Challenger Sam Sevian: Youngest GM In The World

After our preview of the Tata Steel tournament today we focus on one participant of the challengers: GM Sam Sevian, the youngest grandmaster in the world.

The news was covered by the New York Times, but not here on Chess.com yet (shame on us!), but the upcoming Tata Steel tournament provides a nice opportunity. As it turns out, Wijk aan Zee will see the brand new youngest GM on the planet: Sam Sevian of the United States!

In late November 2014, at a GM norm tournament in St. Louis, Sevian crossed the 2500 mark. With three GM norms already earned, he secured the GM title at the age of 13 years, 10 months and 27 days.

One of his games at that tournament was the following crushing win:

Samuel Sevian was born December 26, 2000 in Corning, New York. He is the world's youngest grandmaster, the youngest grandmaster in U.S. history (beating Ray Robson's record) and the first grandmaster born in the year 2000 or later!

Born to Armenian parents, Sevian started playing chess at the age of five. He was also the youngest-ever IM in the U.S. at age 12 years and 10 months, and before that he has also broken records at becoming national expert and master. Sevian became world under-12 champion in 2012 in Maribor, Slovenia.

Sevian scored his GM norms within one year: at the 2014 Foxwoods Open, the Saint Louis Invitational in May and the Washington International in August. He fulfilled the last requirement, a 2500 rating, at the aforementioned Saint Louis GM Norm Invitational tournament in November, which he won.

Until November, the Chinese top talent GM Wei Yi was the youngest GM in the world. He earned the title a bit quicker than Sevian: age 13 years, 8 months, 24 days, at the Reykjavik Open in March 2013 (see the ChessVibes report here).

Sam Sevian is the sixth-youngest GM of all time, behind Bu Xiangzhi, Wei Yi, Magnus Carlsen, Parimarjan Negi and Sergey Karjakin, whose absolute record of 12 years (!), 7 months and 0 days is still hard to beat. 

Here's the full list of players to become a grandmaster before their 15th birthday:

Youngest GMs

Here's a famous video of a 10-year-old Sevian beating IM Greg Shahade:

The video just topped one million views on YouTube. Shahade joked on his Facebook page: "I consider myself fortunate that the pinnacle achievement of my life was recorded for the entire world to see."

Sevian's next tournament will start this Saturday: the Tata Steel Challengers in Wijk aan Zee.

For this group, the full pairings have been published and so we know that he'll fae Dutch GM Robin van Kampen in the first round.

Interestingly, the “old" youngest GM, Wei Yi, plays in the same tournament. He starts with Black against another Sam from the United States: Sam Shankland.