The title International Grandmaster is awarded to world-class chess masters by the world chess organization FIDE. It is a lifetime title, in chess literature usually abbreviated as GM or IGM (this is in contrast to WGM for Woman Grandmaster and IM for International Master. Woman Grandmaster, it should be noted, is a misnomer. It is awarded for a level of skill roughly equivalent to that of an FM, or FIDE Master , a lower title than International Master.)

Normally three favorable results (or norms) in tournaments involving other Grandmasters are required before FIDE will confer the title on a player.

There are other milestones a player can achieve to get the title, such as qualifying for the Candidates tournament. The Candidates Tournaments, now defunct, were a series of tournaments whose winner earned the right to challenge the reigning world champion.

Bobby Fischer received his Grandmaster title by qualifying for the 1959 Candidates Tournament, at the age of 15. In 2002, twelve year old Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin became the youngest Grandmaster ever. Today (April 2005) the youngest GM is Magnus Carlsen from Norway.

Grandmasters normally have an ELO chess rating of over 2500. Players from 2400-2500 normally have acquired the International Master (IM) title.

The title "Grandmaster" was made popular by Russian Tsar Nicholas II who awarded it in 1914 to five players (Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall) who were finalists of a tournament in Saint Petersburg which he had funded. The tournament was won by Emmanuel Lasker ahead of the Cuban, Capablanca.

FIDE first awarded the formal title in 1950. In 1972 there were only 88 GM's with 33 being Russian. These days the figure is much higher.

Some grandmasters:

• Boris Alterman
• Viswanathan Anand
• Maurice Ashley
• Magnus Carlsen
• Bobby Fischer
• Ehsan Ghaem Maghami
• Anatoly Karpov
• Garry Kasparov
• Viktor Korchnoi
• Vladimir Kramnik
• Péter Lékó
• Judit Polgar
• Ruslan Ponomariov
• Yuri Razuvayev
• Boris Spassky
• Mikhail Tal
• Jan Timman

See list of chess players for more.

International Grandmaster titles are also awarded to correspondence chess players, and composers and solvers of chess problems (see chess problem#Titles).

Further reading

• Grandmasters of Chess by Harold Schonberg, Lippincott, 1973. ISBN 0397010044