This pint-sized chess player is proving he’s no pawn.
An 8-year-old chess prodigy became the youngest player to ever checkmate a grandmaster in a classical tournament match when he beat the worthy opponent on Sunday.
Precocious competitor Ashwath Kaushik, of Singapore, defeated 37-year-old Polish grandmaster Jacek Stopa in the fourth round of the Burgdorfer Stadthaus Open in Switzerland over the weekend, Chess.com reported.
He shattered the record of the youngest player to win against a grandmaster in a classical game at eight years, six months and 11 days, according to the outlet.
“I felt really excited and amazing, and I felt proud of my game and how I played, especially since I was worse at one point but managed to come back from that,” Ashwath told Chess.com.
The elementary school student started playing chess at 4 years old and quickly grew to dominate the board game.
“He picked it up, playing with his grandparents,” his father Kaushik Sriram told the website while adding that neither he nor his wife play the game.
At 6 years old, he became a World Under-8 Rapid champion in 2022 during his meteoric rise.
“It’s surreal as there isn’t really any sports tradition in our families,” the boy’s father told Chess.com. “Every day is a new discovery, and we sometimes stumble in search of the right pathway for him.”
Ashwath, who was born in India, plays chess about seven hours daily and cracks thousands of puzzles on an old chess program with the help of a photographic memory, his father said.
One of his coaches, grandmaster Kevin Goh, commended Ashwath for being “tactically very sharp.”
The young boy told a Singapore outlet last year his ultimate goal was to become a world champion.
“His family is extremely supportive and also does not put excessive pressure on him — letting the boy pursue his own targets,” Goh told Chess.com.
“We are proud of Ashwath, but also do not set any targets for him and let him grow at his own pace. Him breaking this world record is simply a bonus.”
