Congratulations! Vincent Keymer turns 19

There is a whole pack of hungry wolves in the junior world rankings who want to get to the top. One of them is Vincent Keymer.

The young man from Sualheim (near Mainz) is used to breaking records and winning major titles. As an eleven-year-old, he won the European Youth Team Championships for the first time. At 12, he became Germany's youngest International Master of all time. At the age of 14, he won the Grenke Open with the best Elo-performance of any 14-year-old ever (2795). At the age of 14 years and 11 months Keymer also became Germany's youngest Grandmaster of all time.

Other successes include: runner-up in the 2021 European Championship, fifth in the 2021 Grand Swiss, winner of the 2022 Prague Challenger, winner of the 2022 German Masters, runner-up in the 2022 World Rapid Chess Championship. At the 2023 World Championship, Vincent Keymer was the only player to beat Carlsen in a classical game, but was eliminated by the world number one. Most recently, Keymer finished fifth again at the Grand Swiss 2023.

Keymer is the clear number one in German chess and represents the German colours reliably and solidly at the top board of the German national team at the various team tournaments, currently at the European Team Championship.

The current live ranking shows that the world's best juniors are all roughly equal in strength, with the exception of Alireza Firouzja, who has already made the leap into the absolute elite. However, the 20-year-old will soon drop out of the world junior rankings because of his age.

Who will succeed him as the world's best junior? Perhaps Keymer, who is currently ranked third in the world behind Firouzja and Praggnanandhaa, who is slightly younger than Keymer. If you look at his age, yesterday Keymer was the second best 18-year-old in the world behind Praggnanandhaa, today he is the best 19-year-old in the world.

So he's one year older and has moved up in the rankings! Congratulations!

The World Chess Federation FIDE congratulated him with a funny short interview in which the best German chess player was invited to characterise himself.