Indian-origin American Abhimanyu Mishra has become the youngest ever chess grandmaster in the world. The chess prodigy has broken Sergey Karjakin's record to become a grandmaster at the age of 12 years, 4 months and 25 days, beating Karjakin by over two months.
Sergey Karjakin’s record of 12 years and 7 months had stood for 19 years. Abhimanyu, often called as Abhi, from New Jersey, clinched the title when he scored his third and final grandmaster norm in Budapest, having already crossed the required 2500 Elo rating barrier.
Abhi beat his fellow prodigy Leon Mendonca in the 9th round of the Vezerkepzo GM Mix tournament in Budapest, Hungary. As per reports, Abhi was only two-and-half-years old when his father introduced him to chess. He was beating his father and competing in local tournaments when he was just 5 years old. At the age of 7, Abhi became the youngest national champion and he went on to become the youngest National Master in the US at the age of nine.
Last year, Abhimanyu became the world’s youngest International Master, and began chasing his dream and achieved the grandmaster feat on Wednesday (June 30) at the Vezerkepzo GM Mix in Budapest. Following the achievement, the child prodigy said that the ongoing pandemic had stopped him for 14 months and he has finally been able to check-mate it.