AHMEDABAD: Five-year-old Dhairya Amit Shroff of Gujarat has become the youngest rated chess player in India and the second youngest in the world. He achieved the feat at the age of five years, four months and two days, breaking the record of Pune’s Sarthak Deshpande, who became the youngest rated player at five years and 11 months.
The Lausanne-headquartered global chess body FIDE too confirmed Dhairya as India’s youngest rated chess player and the second youngest in the world.
A spokesperson of International Chess Federation (FIDE) denied detailed information on the age of the youngest rated player in the world citing Europe’s data privacy rules. The spokesperson said, “The top youngest rated players in the world are Amira Ismayilova of Azerbaijan with Fide rating of 1136, India’s Dhairya Amit Shroff with rating of 1074, Sam Ramezani of Iran with rating of 1013, Andrej Brajic of Serbia with rating of 1310 and France’s Luca Protopopescu with rating of 1369.”
It was during the lockdown induced by the second wave of the pandemic last year that Dhairya got hooked onto the game. “He was only four and would observe me play chess online and slowly began developing interest in the game. I explained to him the rules and moves and he grasped it easily,” Dhairya’s father Amit Shroff told TOI.
