Shortly after the release of the last Chess Horizons, Southbridge’s Samuel Sevian completed his remarkable journey to GM by crossing the 2500 FIDE threshold at an invitational in St. Louis. He had already earned his necessary norms in the months since his 13th birthday. I spoke to the prodigy earlier this year about his remarkable feat.

NS: First of all, congratulations on your GM title. Did you do anything to celebrate?

SS: Thank you for your congratulations, I did not do anything in particular to celebrate, just took my mind off chess for a couple of days, and then went back to work. Of course, it felt great at the moment, [I] kind of felt relieved because leading up to the title I had to work very hard. The most tense moment was when I played the fourth round at St. Louis invitational against IM Gorovets with the game going back and forth in a time trouble situation.