We used to call any young player a “prodigy” if he or she knew how to set up the pieces correctly before age 13.
Times have changed.
A 12-year-old girl, Mehak Gul, is playing on the Pakistani team in the Women’s Olympiad that began last week in Istanbul.
And she isn’t even close to the record:
Ho Meng-Wei was 7 years, 11 months and 12 days old when he began play for Taiwan in the 2008 Men’s Olympiad.
The US has an emerging star in Awonder Liang of Wisconsin. This summer, he became the youngest-ever American to defeat a grandmaster in a tournament game, at an international competition in Washington, DC.
Liang was 9 years, 3 months and 20 days old, and eclipsed the previous record, held by Fabiano Caruana, by eight months.
Caruana went on to become a GM just before his 15th birthday, and today is the world’s 8th-ranked player.
But he’s only the 21st-youngest player to earn the GM title.
There have now been 33 players who were younger than Bobby Fischer was when he became a GM at 15 years and 6 months — and was hailed as a prodigy.
The newest young grandmaster is Vaibhav Suri of New Delhi, India, who earned the title in May at 15 years and 2 months.