Birth of the Grandmaster title The
International Chess Federation (FIDE) was established in 1924 as the governing body of competitive chess. At the time, the term "grandmaster" was already being informally used to describe the world's leading chess players since the players competing in the Championship section of the
Ostend 1907 chess tournament were referred to as "grandmasters" in reference to them all having previously won international tournaments. Separate from FIDE, the Soviet Union also designated their own grandmasters as early as 1927. Informal use of the term continued until 1950 when FIDE officially awarded the
Grandmaster (GM) title to 27 of the world's top past and present players who were still alive, none of whom were women. FIDE first established formal criteria for the Grandmaster title in 1953. These criteria included precursors to the modern-day concept of
norms in that the requirements depended on a player's score in a few individual tournaments with a specified percentage of titled players. FIDE modified these criteria to have GM norms (then called GM results) take into account a tournament's average rating of the competing players in 1970 when they first adopted an
Elo rating system. No earlier than 1977, FIDE added a requirement that players must achieve a
FIDE rating of 2450, a threshold that was later increased to the modern-day requirement of 2500. Modern GM norms that require a
performance rating of 2600 are still based on a player's score, but instead depend on the average rating of the player's opponents rather than all of the players in the tournament.
Earliest female grandmasters (right) and
Judit (center) both became grandmasters.|alt=Young Polgár sisters posing for picture outdoors Beginning in the 1960s,
Nona Gaprindashvili was the first woman since Menchik to be competitive against high-level male players. At the 1977
Lone Pine International after about 15 years as Women's World Champion, she became the first woman to achieve a GM norm. Gaprindashvili compiled a performance rating of 2647 and scored 6½/9 to finish in joint first with three others, including GMs
Yuri Balashov and
Oscar Panno. The following year, FIDE decided to directly award her the Grandmaster title because of that first norm and her other accomplishments, bypassing the typical requirement for players to have achieved two or three norms to earn the GM title.
Maia Chiburdanidze succeeded her compatriot Gaprindashvili as Women's World Champion in 1978 and became the second woman to obtain the Grandmaster title in 1984 through her three World Championship match wins. Later on, she also became the first woman ranked in the top 100, peaking at No. 43 in 1988. the middle of which drew widespread attention because of Sofia's very high performance rating of around 2900, well above the norm requirement. Judit was also already ranked in the top 100 in 1989 at the age of 12, and later peaked at No. 8 in the world in 2003. In 1991, both Susan and Judit achieved the Grandmaster title. Susan was the third female grandmaster, and the first to earn the title with a complete set of GM norms based on performance rating and satisfying the rating requirement. She held the overall record for a little over two years.
Pia Cramling and
Xie Jun soon followed in obtaining the Grandmaster title in the next few years, and were the last two to do so before 2000.
21st century (right) broke Judit Polgár's record to become the youngest female grandmaster in 2002 and held the record until 2008.|alt=Koneru accepting an award from the President of India After over six years without another woman achieving the Grandmaster title, the next century saw a much larger influx of new female grandmasters. Once
Zhu Chen ended that stretch in 2001, the next two decades rarely saw gaps of more than a year without a new female grandmaster. Judit Polgár's record as the youngest female grandmaster lasted a little over a decade until it was broken by
Koneru Humpy in 2002 at the age of 15 years and 1 month.
Hou Yifan then became the youngest female grandmaster in 2008 at 14 years and 6 months. At some point by 2003, FIDE changed their regulations and began awarding the Grandmaster title to players who win the Women's World Championship if they are not already grandmasters. All but one of the ten players in the 2020 Cairns Cup were grandmasters. When the Candidates tournament was revived in 2019 to decide the next World Championship challenger, all of the competitors were grandmasters rated above 2500. While there has continued to be more female grandmasters, the rate of new women to achieve the title has thus far peaked a little before the 2010s. As the overall number of grandmasters has increased from about 300 in 1990 to over 1700 by 2020, women still make up no more than a few percent of the total. ==Title requirements==