Delhi boy Prithu earns his 1st GM norm at 13

Thirteen-year-old Delhi schoolboy Prithu Gupta has bagged his maiden GM norm recently during the Gibraltar Masters tournament, where he also became the International Master.

Prithu achieved his norm with two rounds to spare, which took his ELO Rating above 2400 oints (2450) necessary for the IM title. Earlier, Prithu had logged first IM norm in June, 2017 at the Silverlake Open in Serbia and second norm at the Golden Prague chess festival in July.

Having started playing chess only four years back, Prithu has had a good record, having drawn with world No 23, GM Le QuangLiem (rated 2737 from Vietnam) and GM ItturizagaBonelli Eduardo (rated 2650 from Venezuela). His victims also include French GM Fabien Libiszewski, and a hat-trick of draws against GMs Anna Muzychuk (Ukraine), Svane Rasmus (Germany) and Perez Ponsa Federico (Argentina).

Prithu is an eighth standard student of Modern School (Vasant Vihar) and the Delhi Chess Association felicitated him for his recent achievements. All India Chess Federation president Bharat Singh Chouhan said that the Delhi lad has it in him to make it big at the international level.