With an elo rating of 1,283, five-year-old Kandivili boy Ridit Nimdia becomes the youngest rated chess player in the world
With an elo rating of 1,283, five-year-old Kandivili boy Ridit Nimdia becomes the youngest rated chess player in the world
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Ridit Sunil Nimdia, all of five years, has to exert himself to reach for the chess pieces after sitting on a stack of chairs during tournaments but once his tiny fingers grip the pieces, it is his opponents who have to sweat it out to untangle themselves from the clutches of defeat.
Chess has been getting younger in recent times and Ridit became the youngest ever player in the world to earn a rating when FIDE (World chess body) released the official rating list this month.
An ELO rating of 1,283 was a cause for more celebration when the kid celebrated his fifth birthday on September 23.
Watch and learn
Learning the rudiments of the game just by watching his sister play when he was about three years-old, the journey has been rapid for Ridit.
His parents Richa and Sunil were quick to spot his interest and enrolled him for coaching at Chanakya Chess Club.
Success followed when at four years and two months he scored a whopping 7.5/10 in the Under-7 section of the Mumbai Inter School Chess Championship in 2008.
A senior KG student of Thakur Public School, Kandivili, Ridit played in the first Prabodhan FIDE International Rating tournament and in the very first round defeated YD Jain (ELO 1,736) to become the youngest player in the world to defeat a rated player.
Privilege
"Ridit is immensely talented and I had the privilege of watching him play at the rating tournament," said PB Bhilare, secretary of the Mumbai Chess Association, who was the arbiter at this event.
Child prodigies like P Harikrishna and Koneru Humpy also exhibited immense talent when they were just seven or eight years old but Ridit is much younger and just how much he builds on the potential he promises so early is clearly something to watch out for!
India's chess fraternity can surely be proud.
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