Miroslav Filip at 6'9" was the tallest GM I've heard of, and Wilhelm Steinitz ( "barely five foot" ) the shortest (I know Steinitz was around before the GM title was awarded, but as he was World Champion I think we can safely say he was strong enough to be considered a GM).
Samuel Reshevsky was another very short player (it says 5' 2" in my notes, though I haven't recorded the source for that).
Max Euwe was 6' 2" (he looks taller than that in some pictures).
Morphy was 5' 6".
Many of the British GMs from the 80s and later seem to be very tall. Nigel Short and Luke McShane both tower above me (I stand 3' 6" without my lifts). John Nunn and Jon Speelman are both over six foot.
Originally posted by greenpawn34 What about that kid who became a GM at 12. he must be well under 5 feet.
Does Karjakin still hold the record? If so, he became a GM at around 12.5, and if you examine the WHO's growth charts you'll find that the mean height for boys of that age is exactly five foot! I suspect Karjakin might be a little shorter than average and he looks like a little boy in the pictures taken of him when he was awarded the GM title.
Now that so many women are GMs (as opposed to WGMs), I suppose it's quite possible that there might be a woman GM who is shorter than 5'. How about Xu Yuhua? She looks tiny in the pictures I've seen of her.
Originally posted by Fat Lady Samuel Reshevsky was another very short player (it says 5' 2" in my notes, though I haven't recorded the source for that).
Max Euwe was 6' 2" (he looks taller than that in some pictures).
Morphy was 5' 6".
Many of the British GMs from the 80s and later seem to be very tall. Nigel Short and Luke McShane both tower above me (I stand 3' 6" without my lifts). John Nunn and Jon Speelman are both over six foot.
Originally posted by Fat Lady Samuel Reshevsky was another very short player (it says 5' 2" in my notes, though I haven't recorded the source for that).
Max Euwe was 6' 2" (he looks taller than that in some pictures).
He looks taller than that because he played Sammy a lot.
There's a picture in the 1948 WC match book with all five candidates. Botwinnik looks like average length, but Euwe, Smyslov and Keres all tower over him - Keres looks about an inch shorter than Smyslov and Euwe is somewhere in between. Sammy in the foreground comes up to Keres' shoulder. Vidmar, the chief arbiter, is slightly shorter than Botwinnik, but makes up for it with corpulence.
Edit: and from the 1935 match book, Alekhine looks about the same size as Botwinnik (at least, assuming Max didn't change size in between), while Salo Flohr must've been even shorter than Reshevsky.
How tall/Short are GMs?
23 May '12 08:481 edit
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