India’s R. Praggnanandhaa beat Grandmaster Jan Krejci in Round 8 of the Czech Open in Pardubice, but it tells you all you need to know about his career so far that he can be a little disappointed with the result! The 2429-rated 10-year-old has already fulfilled all the requirements to become the youngest international master in chess history and is now hunting down Sergey Karjakin’s grandmaster record. He didn’t quite make a GM-norm in the Czech Republic, and he has company: 10-year-old 2374-rated Javokhir Sindarov finished on the same score.

Praggnanandhaa is the youngest international master in history | photo: IIFL Wealth Mumbai International

These are two kids we can expect to hear a lot more about in future - and later in this report we have Jan Gustafsson’s analysis of that GM-killing game – but first we should glance at the very top of the almost 300-player field. 

1.Movsesian (Armenia), 2.Laznicka (Czech Republic), 3.Visakh (India), 4, Horsey (Czech Republic) | photo: Czech Open website  

In 2015 Sergei Movsesian finished second in Pardubice, half a point behind Viktor Laznicka. One year later and the roles were exactly reversed, with Armenian polyglot Movsesian scoring 7.5/9 to finish half a point ahead of Laznicka and eight more players.

Replay the top games with computer analysis:

The key game was the penultimate round encounter with top seed Surya Ganguly, where Sergei got in everyone’s favourite Sicilian knight “sacrifice”:

Taking with the pawn of course loses the queen in a single move, but 14…Nxd5 may have been the way to go. After 14…Rb8? 15.Qg5! Black only managed to stumble on for seven more moves before conceding defeat.

Ten-year-old terrors

Javokhir Sindarov, armed with Kit Kats, would go on to beat Matthias Hoerr in the 8th round | photo: Czech Open website

A little further down the table on 5.5/9 we find Praggnanandhaa in 46th place and Sindarov in 47th – an unlikely but perfect illustration of Tai Pruce-Zimmerman’s contention that these two youngsters are “neck and neck” as they climb inexorably to the top. Here’s what he has to say about them in his latest prodigy update on the Chess by the Numbers blog:

Atop the current watchlist are two ten year olds who had prodigy ranks in the teens six months ago, and have now each jumped to #2 for their respective ages! IM R Praggnanandhaa became the youngest IM in chess history by a margin of over a year! At 2429, Praggu is the highest rated U-12 player in the world, and again let us remember that he hasn’t even turned 11 yet. K-factors can’t be blamed for his high rating, as he’s proven his worth in earning those IM norms. Will his next achievement be to break Karjakin’s record and become the youngest GM of all time? He has just over a year and a half to work with if that’s his goal. And whether or not that happens, I can’t wait to see what heights he reaches over the next decade.

Right on Praggu’s heels, about four months younger, is CM Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan. Sindarov holds the record for highest U-10 rating of all time (2299 in October 2015), and for highest U-10.5 rating (2384 in March). His current rating of 2374 is higher (at a younger age) than Praggu was until this month. In other words: despite their young ages the two have been neck and neck with each other for years already, both flirting with (and occasionally setting) records for highest rating at various ages. Will this battle with both each other, and with the record books, continue for years to come?

Tai notes that the only player keeping them from being the highest rated players ever at their age is Nodirbek Abdusattorov (featured here at age nine), who hit the amazing heights of 2465 as a 10-year-old and whose achievements are shown as the green line on this graph:

In the Czech Open the prodigies took very different paths to achieving the same result:

If you wanted to pick one game to sum up the tournament for both players, though, it would perhaps be their encounters with the unfortunate Czech Grandmaster Jan Krejci. “Praggu” pulled off an impressive win, while Sindarov showed great resilience (and alertness on move 124!) to survive a lost position. Jan Gustafsson takes a look at how our 10-year-olds got on:

So what now? Well, the IM title is already sewn up for the new kid from Chennai:

It took him only 4 months to pick up the three IM norms! | image: FIDE

Before that he picked up the U8 and U10 World Youth Championships, with his older sister Vaishali also winning the U12 and U14 World Girls Championships. 

Praggu has already met his partial namesake! | photo: Indian Express

You can see the two together is this report from 2012, where our hero is called "Prag":

For the last two years he’s been coached by Grandmaster RB Ramesh, who talked about his first class with the prodigy, then 8. Ramesh asked the children what they wanted to learn:

The kids in that age group would scratch their heads and think. Some would just say they didn’t want to learn anything. But Praggnanandhaa, whom I had never met before, raised his hand and said that he wanted to learn everything I could teach. I’ve never heard an eight-year-old say something like that about chess.

There are other familiar skills for young chess talents:

Normally I’d teach them one move, and ask them to practice it. But Praggnanandhaa said he wanted to know the next move and the next move after that before he would start practice. He has a fantastic memory which lets him remember his old matches. He knows the mistakes he’s made without being told. The way he analyses his games is way beyond his years.

It’s reassuring that Ramesh also notes the kid is still a TV addict who watches cartoons, but he’s now got 19 months to become the youngest grandmaster in history…

Can Praggnanandhaa reach the very top? | photo: Czech Open

Who do you consider the most promising prodigy in world chess at this moment in time?