 "Abhimanyu Mishra")
On June 30, Abhimanyu Mishra of Englishtown, New Jersey (US), was 12 years 4 months and 25 days old when he sat down to play 15-year-old Goan Grandmaster Leon Luke Mendonca at the Vezerkepzo Tournament in Budapest, Hungary. “Abhi’s” win in that game made him the youngest person to earn the right to call himself “Grandmaster” (GM).
This breaks a long-standing record set by Sergey Karjakin, way back in 2002. Karjakin was then 12 years 7 months old. Mishra gains additional credit for doing this during the pandemic, which severely limited opportunities.
Mishra is also, not coincidentally, the youngest person to have achieved the International Master (IM) title, which he did at the ripe old age of 10 years, 9 months and 3 days, which made him all of 17 days younger than the previous IM record-holder, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa.
Prodigies are common enough in chess. Some children are born with a gift for understanding the intricate patterns of the game. Increasing digitisation has helped chess players achieve proficiency, earlier and earlier. Databases and engines aid rapid improvement. Playing against strong players is possible, 24x7, on the Internet.
But it still takes many hours of study and practice to hone talent into a winning weapon in a highly competitive sport. Mishra was just about two-and-a-half when he learnt the moves, and about five when his parents (both IT professionals) realised he had this gift. His father, Hemant Mishra, has since focused on ensuring he gets the best help available, and gets to play as often as possible against strong opposition.
Chess is an expensive game. You have to buy databases and run analysis on expensive computers, and travel. Hemant Mishra reckons they’ve spent around $200,000 so far. This includes coaching camps, trips, regular coaching sessions, expensive servers configured for analysis, etc. To save money, they used to drive to events in North America rather than flying. Hemant Mishra also set up crowdfunding mechanisms, soliciting help on platforms like GoFundMe. He also created social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram, etc, to ensure his son stayed in the public eye.
NRIs and Indians have backed this quest to the hilt. GM Arun Prasad and GM Magesh Chandran, who are both US-based, have been coaching Abhimanyu Mishra since he was 5-6 years old. More recently, GM R B Ramesh, who’s perhaps the most famous coach in India, has pitched in. Abhimanyu Mishra is now also part of the Pro Chess stable of talent. He’s also trained with GM Surya Sekhar Ganguly, who was Viswanathan Anand’s long-term second and acknowledged that help on Twitter.
The title of Grandmaster was coined by Czar Nicholas II, who awarded it to five great players (three of them world champions) after inviting them to play in St Petersburg in 1914. After the Second World War, the award of the title (and that of International Master, etc) was systematised with mathematical benchmarks set, based on Elo ratings and titles of opponents. At the very least, becoming a GM now requires three good performances (“norms”) in three separate tournaments, or it requires direct qualification to the World Championship Candidates.
On September 10, 1958, Bobby Fischer, who was then 15 years, 6 months and a day old, became the youngest-ever grandmaster when he qualified for the Candidates. It took an astonishing 33 years before Hungarian prodigy Judit Polgar broke Fischer’s record in December 1991. She was aged 15 years, 5 months.
Since then, 31 players have earned the GM title before hitting 15. Just five have done it before crossing into their teens. Mishra is the latest, of course. The others are Sergey Karjakin, Dommaraju Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa and Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan.
Although online chess has grown explosively in popularity, getting the title requires playing physical events, and the pandemic forced a hiatus. Through 2019, Mishra sat at home, practiced and prepared. When his chance came, he took it convincingly.
In late April, his father took him to Hungary for a series of events. Abhimanyu Mishra showed all the months of sitting at home hadn’t blunted his hunger, or his competitive instincts. He calmly scored the three required norms, playing tournaments practically without a break. (Mendonca has also been stuck in Europe for a year after being stranded during the pandemic in 2019. He also achieved the GM title in January 2021).
Abhimanyu Mishra’s next goal is unsurprising – he wants to become the youngest world champion, doing it before he’s 22 to break Garry Kasparov’s record. That will, of course, be several orders of magnitude harder. But as Hemant Mishra says “This achievement gives him the confidence to face anything life throws at him!”
