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When the rest of kids his age are learning that ‘a’ is for apple and ‘b’ is for ball, three-year-old Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha has already started thinking that ‘c’ is for checkmate. When Sarwagya plays chess, he thumps his pieces on the squares and slaps the clock with a particular menace, which would indicate that he is trying to rattle his opponent. But the fact that he has to stand up on his chair, or sit on three chairs stacked one over the other, just to reach the other end of the chess board is a dead giveaway of the boy’s tender age. At the age of three years, seven months and 20 days, Sarwagya is now the world’s youngest rated player in chess history.
Hailing from Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar, Sarwagya is still in nursery school but holds a rapid rating of 1,572. He dethroned Kolkata’s Anish Sarkar, who, in November last year, had become the youngest rated player in history at the age of three years, eight months and 19 days.
Having picked up the sport last year when he was two-and-a-half-years old, Sarwagya’s daily diet of the sport already includes four to five hours of chess, one hour of which is spent at a chess training centre in Sagar, while the rest is spent on playing online games and learning tactics via videos.
“We pushed him into chess last year because we noticed his mind was a sponge and he would pick up things very quickly. In a week of being taught chess he could name all the pieces accurately,” says his father Siddharth. “He loves the sport a lot. If you wake him up in the middle of the night and ask him to play, he will for hours without a break. But what separates him from other kids his age is his patience to sit on the board and not get restless.”
“When his parents first approached me to train him last year, he looked like a very normal kid. But soon, his capability to play the game well started to shine,” says his coach Nitin Chaurasiya.
In the initial days, Chaurasiya says, coaching the boy was tricky: any hint of sternness could send him bawling. So he tried a different tikdambaazi (tactic): he would give the boy a toffee or a pack of chips each time he played the right move.
“You ask him anything and there’s no hesitation in answering. He can also hold his own on the board against older kids. You can see his guts when he plays,” says Chaurasiya.
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For a state like Madhya Pradesh, the emergence of young players like Sarwagya, has heralded fresh hope.
“This is a proud moment for the Madhya Pradesh chess fraternity. We hope that he’ll become the youngest grandmaster in the world. Recently, another player from MP, Madhvendra Pratap Sharma, also won two gold medals at the Asian Chess Championship and the Commonwealth Chess Championship in a span of 16 days. These are great signs for MP chess,” says Akshat Khamparia, the convenor of Madhya Pradesh Chess Ad-Hoc Committee, who is also an international master.
Three-year-old Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha stands next to international master Akshat Khamparia, who is the convenor of Madhya Pradesh Chess Ad-Hoc Committee, at Dr Ajit Kasliwal Memorial All India Open FIDE Rapid Rating Chess Tournament in Indore. (Photo: Special arrangement)
The base rating any chess player can have is 1,400 with players whose rating falls below that threshold then considered un-rated players. To get a starting rating above 1,400 there are multiple riders that a player must meet. They have to play against five rated players across one or multiple tournaments and score points against them with a draw or a victory. These results must also come in FIDE-approved tournaments (so no one can pick up rating while playing five games against a wilful opponent in their backyard).
Sarwagya’s journey to become the youngest rated player started at the 24th RCC International FIDE Rated Rapid Cup held in Mangaluru, where he beat 22-year-old Abhijeet Awasthi (rated 1,542). Then, at the 2nd Shri Dadaji Dhuniwale Open tournament in Khandwa, where players like grandmaster Mitrabha Guha were also competing, he beat 29-year-old Shubham Chourasiya (rated 1,559). He defeated 20-year-old Yogesh Namdev (rated 1,696) at the Dr. Ajit Kasliwal Memorial All India Open FIDE Rapid Rating Chess Tournament in Indore this month before defeating Abhijeet Awasthi (1542) at the 1st GH Raisoni Memorial at Chhindwara this month.
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Just for context, former world champion Magnus Carlsen first played the sport at the age of five. India’s Viswanathan Anand, meanwhile, was six when he learnt how to play. Gukesh D, who last year became the youngest world champion in chess history at the age of 18 and is among the youngest players in history to become a grandmaster, was seven when he first pushed a piece across the battlefield of the chessboard.
No wonder then, that there is already talk in the air about Sarwagya becoming the youngest grandmaster in history with Chaurasiya targeting the record of 12 years, four months, and 25 days set by Abhimanyu Mishra when he became the world’s youngest grandmaster ever.
“We’ll start looking for other coaches soon who can train him for that goal. Maybe get him some online coaching too,” says the coach.
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