Indian boy, 3, becomes world’s youngest rated chess player

To become the world's youngest rated player, Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha beat multiple players in their 20s.

At just three years old, a young boy from India has become the youngest chess player to earn an official rating from the International Chess Federation.

Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha, born in 2022, beat multiple opponents — far older than him — to earn a 1,572 rating in rapid chess.

To become the youngest rated player, Sarwagya beat 22-year-old Abhijeet Awasthi (rated 1,542), 29-year-old Shubham Chourasiya (rated 1,559), 20-year-old Yogesh Namdev (rated 1,696) and Abhijeet Awasthi (1542) at several different tournaments, some where grandmasters were competing, according to The Indian Express.

The base rating any chess player can have is 1,400; any lower and they are considered unrated. To become a Grand Master, players tend to exceed a 2,500 rating.

The scale estimates a player’s skills based on wins and losses against opponents. Larger rating shifts occur when a player beats opponents ranked higher or loses to opponents ranked lower. Your rapid rating is your skill level in longer games.

To be rated by the International Chess Federation, a player has to score points against at least five rated players at official events.

Sarwagya, from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, is one of a growing number of young Indian players climbing the sport’s ranks, marking a hopeful new era of dominance for the province which has recently produced chess champions.

Those champions include Madhvendra Pratap Sharma, who won two gold medals at the Asian Chess Championship and the Commonwealth Chess Championship in under three weeks.