Youngest and oldest active player

Question

Which currently active player is the youngest and which the oldest ?

Korchnoi is a candidate for the oldest, but I do not know if he is still active.

Answer 1

The answer to your question

Korchnoi is alive. And playing! He played a match against Wolfgang Ulhmann last week (15-16 February 2015) in the Veterans section of the Zürich Chess Challenge. He won two games and lost two.

However, today (22 February 2015) the oldest active GM is the American Arthur B. Bisguier (Elo 2170) born in 1929. Korchnoi was born two years later.

But the most veteran player title is for Lourenço Joao Cordioli (Elo 1928), a Brasilian lawyer born in 1916. And he plays still; he actually got the 100th place in the Floripa Chess Open 2015 on January.

The youngest FIDE rated players are two boys born in 2010, an Indian boy rated 1036 and an Iranian boy rated 1340. I prefer not to give the names to protect their privacy, since they are so young.

The youngest GM is Samuel Sevian (Elo 2531, born in 2000), the youngest USA GM at the age of 13 years, 10 months, 27 days. There are also two WGMs born the same year: Zhansaya Abdumalik (Elo 2379) from Kazakhstan and Gunay Mammadzada (Elo 2334) from Azerbaijan.

Some details on how I found the information

To answer your question I have used the latest FIDE list of active players of February 12th 2015. But it has been more difficult than expected because of errors and missing data in the list.

For example, there was one player in the list born in 2049?! (maybe 1949?), another one in 205 (2005?), another in 1881 (1981?) and another in 1895 (1985?). Then, quite a lot of players had 0 or 1900 as birth year, which surely means that it is unknown.

And finally, according to the FIDE list there are 1 active player born in 2015 (?!), 3 born in 2014, 5 born in 2013, 3 born in 2012, 19 born in 2011... all of them unrated (of course). I confess I don't know what this means.

Anyway, I started looking for the oldest player. The first serious candidate was Carl Weibrecht (German, born in 1911, no FIDE rating). Although he appears as active in the list, I found a message in the website of Schachkreis Zugspitze dated May 1st 2011 saying

"Chess Circle Zugspitze mourns chess friend Carl Weibrecht from Garmisch" (Google translated).

So he might not be active, after all...

The second candidate to the oldest player title was Dr. Horst Reichel, professor in Computer Science (also German, born in 1912, no FIDE rating). I have found some of his games for the period 2003-2006, but not later. So I am not sure if he is still playing. However, if the birthdate is correct he played till well passed 90 years old.

Then, there are other apparently active players born in 1915 (all without FIDE rating)... And at this point I decided to restrict the search to rated players and GMs.

Answer 2

Not the current youngest and oldest but back in 1990 I was board 2 for Wincanton chess club (England) in the East Somerset league. Boards 3 and 4 were 11 year-old Jack Rudd and 89 year-old RG Gray (Mr. Gray to relative youngsters like me ;-). Then the captain broke the bad news to me. Jack was being promoted and I was down to board 3. Suddenly I was playing between 2 players whose ages added up to 100 but with an age difference of 78. So, good candidates for the youngest and oldest to play at the same time for the same team.

Only in chess.

Note that Mr Gray had been playing chess long enough and at a high enough level that he played against Tartakover when he took refuge in England during the second world war and hence has a Morphy number of 3. Jack has beaten James Sherwin and hence has a Fischer number of 2.

Answer 3

The oldest chess player was Zoltan Sarosy. He lived 1906 - 2017 at 110 years. He was still playing actively in his centenarian years.

Answer 4

A good candidate for the oldest GM is Yuri Averbakh, (but not sure he is active anymore) see Wikipedia.

As for the youngest, I would say this guy.

As for Korchnoi, yes, he is still alive, see this interview on Chessbase.