12-Year-Old Megan Paragua Hits 2506 Performance During Grenke Open, Breaks 2300
WFM Megan Paragua is a young master to watch out for. Just 12 years old, she put up a performance rating of 2506 (grandmaster strength) by round seven at the 2025 Grenke Chess Open A after a draw with GM Mikheil Kekelidze. Though she lost the last two rounds, which lowered her performance afterward, she is still eligible for the FIDE master title because she crossed 2300 during the event. She gained 79 rating points in that one tournament alone.
Congrats to Megan Paragua on crossing 2300 and earning the FM title mid-way through the Grenke Open! 🥳
— Women's Chess Coverage (@OnTheQueenside) April 20, 2025
She did it at age 12 (!!), just like Alice Lee! 👏👏
And she has a good chance at norms too! 👀https://t.co/tmUXyJXYyS
📷: Crystal Fuller#chess #womeninchess pic.twitter.com/akCU3IpoWm
According to Chess.com's statistics team, if she were 2300+ on the next published rating list, she would be the sixth youngest female player to cross that threshold, right ahead of GM Hou Yifan, the world's number-one woman player.
Top Girls To Hit 2300 Rating
| Player Name | Age |
| Judit Polgar | 10 years, 6 months, 9 days |
| Liu Pei | 11 years, 4 months, 6 days |
| Thanh Trang Hoang | 11 years, 9 months, 7 days |
| Lu Miaoyi | 12 years, 4 months, 21 days |
| Tan Zhongyi | 12 years, 5 months, 2 days |
| Alice Lee | 12 years, 5 months, 16 days |
| Hou Yifan | 12 years, 5 months, 21 days |
| Harika Dronavalli | 12 years, 6 months, 24 days |
| Kateryna Lagno | 12 years, 7 months, 4 days |
| Akshita Gorti | 12 years, 7 months, 24 days |
The tournament occurred alongside the 2025 Grenke Chess Freestyle Open, which GM Magnus Carlsen won with a perfect 9/9 score. Both events, which were a nine-round Swiss with a time control of 90+30, ran on the same schedule.
The niece of Filipino-American GM Mark Paragua (both based in New York), Megan is the 2025 All Girls U18 national champion and FIDE number-one for girls under 13. She won gold at both the rapid and blitz events at the FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Cadet Chess Championship 2024 and first place at the 2024 New York State K-12 All Girls Championship. In 2022 and 2023, she was a national scholastic grade 4 and 5 co-champion and, also in 2023, the U12 girls Pan-American champion.
Her published FIDE rating is 2199, but we expect that to spike at the next published rating list, on May 1.
The highest-rated player she beat was 2396-rated IM Ashot Parvanyan, in round four. After they traded into an innocuous-looking endgame, Black didn't quite sense the danger in the position. The slow 22...Kg7? allowed Megan to take advantage, and she won a pawn after a tactical skirmish.
The second-highest rated win came two rounds later, against IM Michael Kopylov (rated 2333). The international master miscalculated a tactical sequence, presumably missing the skewer after 19...Bxa4 from afar.
Two losses in the last rounds brought her performance a bit more back to earth. With a 5/9 score, she still gains a whopping 79 points.
Megan is a ChessKid ambassador who has played in events such as the ChessKid Youth Championships as well as Kids vs. Stars. In the first episode of the latter, she and FM Rose Atwell (another promising American junior), defeated the stars WGM Nemo Zhou and WFM Anna Cramling.
In a short interview with FM Mike Klein, Megan said that she was fully aware of her rating progress during the event: "Every single round, I was checking... [earning the FM title] was my goal, so I'm really updated." She mentioned that having the k factor = 40 helped (players under 18 years old gain and lose points at a faster rate, if they are under 2300), but she said she was also fortunate to have highly-rated opponents throughout the tournament.
She loves chess, but it's not her only interest. "I try to do as much [for chess] as I can, but I still have a lot of time for my hobbies. I like to draw... i like to paint, and sometimes i like practicing guitar," she shared.
Coming up next for Megan is the 2025 ChessKid Youth Championships ("Blitz is one of my specialties," she said), as well as the U.S. SuperNationals VIII. She'll represent Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School in the K-12 section, despite only being in sixth grade, on the same team with IMs Nico Chasin and Tani Adewumi. Past attendees of that school were GMs Hans Niemann and Marc Arnold.
On potentially being the sixth youngest female to reach 2300, she said, "I can't really process that this happened and I'm really impressed and proud from how far I've come... I really hope that this also can inspire other girls to play chess."
I really hope that this also can inspire other girls to play chess.
—Megan Paragua
