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Abhimanyu Mishra Youngest IM In History
Abhimanyu Mishra, the youngest IM in the world. Photo courtesy Swati Hemant Mishra.

Abhimanyu Mishra Youngest IM In History

PeterDoggers
| 42 | Chess Event Coverage

Abhimanyu Mishra of New Jersey recently fulfilled all requirements for the International Master title at the age of 10 years, nine months and three days—younger than anyone else.

Mishra, who is often called "Abhi," broke the previous record held by the current world U18 champion Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu by 17 days.

Mishra scored his third IM norm earlier this month at the inaugural Chess Max Academy Fall Invitational, a round-robin organized by GM Maxim Dlugy's chess school in New York. The first norm was achieved in a similar round-robin this summer, and then Mishra scored his second at the Los Angeles Fall GM and IM Norm event.

Early achievements include silver medals in both the 2017 Pan American Youth Championship in Costa Rica and the 2017 World Cadet U8 Championship in Brazil. 

Mishra has worked with several coaches, including GMs Arun Prasad Subramanian and Magesh Panchanathan and WFM Anuprita Patil.

This summer Mishra participated in a three-day training course by 13th world champion Garry Kasparov via the Kasparov Chess Foundation. Mishra currently works with KCF head coach GM Alexander Chernin of Hungary.

Abhimanyu “Abhi” Mishra Kasparov training
Training with Garry Kasparov in the summer of 2019. Left to right: Andrew Hong, Rochelle Wu, Michael Khodarkovsky, Garry Kasparov, Brandon Jacobson, Abhi Mishra, Christopher Yoo. Photo: Adithya Chandra/Saint Louis Chess Club.

Currently rated 2396, Mishra scored 4.5/9 and a 2456 performance at the Fall Invitational last week, where he drew all his games. He won 14.8 Elo points.

The tournament, won by IM Brandon Jacobson, included three grandmasters: Mark Paragua and Oliver Barbosa (both Philippines) and Leonid Yudasin (Israel). Chess.com received games against two of these GMs, annotated by Mishra.

In round five, Mishra achieved a draw with Barbosa by defending a slightly worse position into a knight endgame:

In the next round he drew Paragua as Black in a sharp Sicilian. A database search reveals that almost the whole game had been played before, but in his annotations Mishra says he was on his own from move 10:

Abhimanyu Mishra Maxim Dlugy
Abhimanyu Mishra with Maxim Dlugy. Photo courtesy Maxim Dlugy.

Mishra's next world record attempt might be to try and beat Sergey Karjakin's record of youngest GM ever—12 years and seven months.

PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”

Peter's first book The Chess Revolution is out now!

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