Prodigy Nihal Sarin Becomes A Grandmaster At 14
At the age of 14 years, one month, and one day, the Indian prodigy Nihal Sarin became the 12th-youngest grandmaster in chess history. He scored his third grandmaster norm at the 25th Abu Dhabi Masters held at Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Nihal started strongly with 3/4. His round-four win against Australian IM Ikeda Junta was particularly impressive.
In round five, Nihal played GM Ivan Cheparinov, who recently switched his federation to Georgia. He was pressing but had to be content with a draw. Then he scored a clutch win in round six against GM Mircea-Emeilian Parligras of Romania. That was probably the pivotal game for his GM-norm.
In the game, Nihal showed fine positional understanding, won a pawn, and demonstrated excellent technique to bring home the point.
Looking back at his nascent career, Nihal first made his name known by winning the Indian national under-nine championship in 2013 in Chennai. He followed that by winning the World-Under Ten Championship 2014 in Durban, South Africa.
Nihal giving an interview at the World Junior Chess Championship, 2014. | Video: Nihal Sarin.
In 2016, Nihal played his first International Open tournament at Capelle la Grande, France where he scored his first IM norm and also defeated a grandmaster for the first time.
A year later, he became an international master at the Aeroflot Open 2017 in Moscow, Russia.
In April 2017, Nihal scored his first grandmaster norm at the TV2 Fagernes Open in Norway. He scored an undefeated 6/9 against top-quality opposition.
At Chess.com's Isle of Man Master tournament 2017, FM Mike Klein caught up with him in an interview.
2017 was very kind to Nihal as he gained a whopping 192 Elo points in a calendar year while also crossing 2500.
Despite these achievements, the GM norm just wouldn't come. Nihal was steadily increasing his rating, but it wasn't until the Reykjavik Open in 2018 that he scored his second norm. Watch this wonderful interview he gave right after defeating GM Elshan Moradiabadi.
Much like his friend Praggnanandhaa, who became the second-youngest GM of all time, Nihal also has a support team. He is generally accompanied by his mother, Shijin, at tournaments and sometimes by his Dad or younger sister Neha. His manager Priyadarshan Banjan does all his other work to ensure Nihal focuses on his chess.
These days young Nihal is even streaming on Chess.com via Twitch.
You can also watch this fun bullet game between Nihal and his good friend GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov played in Corsica, France last month.
Viswanathan Anand, who was playing in the Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz event, was one of many who shared his congratulations.
Congrats and welcome to @NihalSarin ! The boys are on a roll!
— Viswanathan Anand (@vishy64theking) August 15, 2018
Anand sharing a photo with Nihal Sarin and Praggnandhaa. | Photo Maria Emelianova/Chess.com.
Former women's world champion GM Susan Polgar tweeted:
Nihal's current trainer, GM Srinath Narayanan also tweeted :Congratulations to @NihalSarin of India! He just became the 53rd GM of this great chess nation at the age of 14 years (1 mo+1 day) after scoring his final GM norm at Abu Dhabi Open with 1 rd to spare! @chessfederation @FIDE_chess @EuropeEchecs @chessdom @AD_Chess_Club @UAEChess pic.twitter.com/OFB7vtAKyv
— Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) August 15, 2018
Congratulations on the GM title, which may be merely the first step in a thousand mile journey, but also one of the annoying distractions around in the career of a lot of players. (5/5) @ChessbaseIndia @ChessBase @chess24com @chesscom @chesscom_in
— Srinath Narayanan (@nsrinath69) August 14, 2018
The Youngest Chess Grandmasters In History
| No. | Fed | Player | Country | Age |
| 1 | Sergey Karjakin | Russia | 12 years, 7 months, 0 days | |
| 2 | Praggnanandhaa R. | India | 12 years, 10 months, 14 days | |
| 3 | Nodirbek Abdusattorov | Uzbekistan | 13 years, 1 month, 11 days | |
| 4 | Parimarjan Negi | India | 13 years, 4 months, 22 days | |
| 5 | Magnus Carlsen | Norway | 13 years, 4 months, 27 days | |
| 6 | Wei Yi | China | 13 years, 8 months, 23 days | |
| 7 | Bu Xiangzhi | China | 13 years, 10 months, 13 days | |
| 8 | Samuel Sevian | United States | 13 years, 10 months, 27 days | |
| 9 | Richard Rapport | Hungary | 13 years, 11 months, 6 days | |
| 10 | Teimour Radjabov | Azerbaijan | 14 years, 0 months, 14 days | |
| 11 | Ruslan Ponomariov | Ukraine | 14 years, 0 months, 17 days | |
| 12 | Nihal Sarin | India | 14 years, 1 month, 1 days | |
| 13 | Awonder Liang | United States | 14 years, 1 month, 20 days | |
| 14 | Wesley So | United States | 14 years, 1 month, 28 days | |
| 15 | Etienne Bacrot | France | 14 years, 2 months, 0 days |
The youngest grandmasters of all time, via Wikipedia
Rakesh Kulkarni is the Director of Indian Social Media for Chess.com and a correspondent on chess in India.
Rakesh has earned the International Master title and is a former Commonwealth Blitz Champion and a Commonwealth Bronze medallist in the junior category. Rakesh has a Masters of Commerce degree in Management & Business administration. He now is a professional chess player and trains young talents across the globe on chess.com
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