Nihal Sarin

Nihal Sarin
Born (2004-07-13) 13 July 2004
Thrissur  India
FIDE rating 2340
Peak rating 2364

Nihal Sarin (Malayalam: നിഹാല്‍ സരിന്‍, born 13 July 2004), is a chess player and a child prodigy from Thrissur, Kerala, India.[1] In an article in the World Chess website, GM Parimarjan Negi referred to Nihal as 'mature beyond his years'.[2]

Chess Career

Nihal won the Under-10 blitz title at the World Youth Chess Championship in Al Ain on December 29, 2013.[3] In June 2014, Nihal won the Asian Under-10 Blitz & Rapid Championship (Tashkent, Uzbekistan). Next was the World Under-10 (Classic) Open title at the World Youth Chess Championship which was held in Durban, South Africa in September 2014.[4] He got nine points from 11 rounds in WYCC 2014 to win the title. For this achievement, he was conferred the Candidate Master (CM) title by FIDE. The very next year in 2015, he won the silver medal in the Under-12 category (WYCC, Greece) starting as the 28th seed among 202 participants from 73 countries. He was conferred the FIDE Master title by the World chess Federation (FIDE) in the same year as he had crossed live ELO rating of 2300.

He was the National Under-9 Champion, 2013 (Chennai), National Under-11 Silver medalist,2015(Pondicherry), National Under-11 Bronze medalist, 2014 (Puri, Odisha) and six-time Kerala state champion in Under-07, Under-09 (twice), Under-11 (twice) and Under-15 (Sub-Junior) categories. He became runner up in State Senior championship in 2015, Irinjalakuda at the age of 10 years, thus becoming eligible to represent Kerala in the National Challengers Championship 2015. He was twice the State Under-19 (Juniors) Runner-up at the age of 8 & 10 years respectively.

At the age of 10 years on June 12, 2015, at Thodupuzha, Kerala, Nihal played simultaneously against 112 players of all age categories winning all his matches[10].

Nihal has beaten two grandmasters including the legendary Lithuanian GM, Eduardas Rozentalis. This game was selected as game of the day by the famous chess website chess-db on 08.05.2016 [11]

Nihal has drawn a handful of GMs including former World Championship candidate (twice), Kevin Spraggett [12] has won against four International Masters (IM) and five senior state champions in his career so far. In 2016, at the age of 11 years, he became one of the youngest from India to achieve an IM norm at Cappelle la Grande, France. Former World champion Alexander Alekhine is his favourite chess player.

Family

Nihal is the elder son of Dr Sarin, a skin specialist and Dr Shijin, a Psychiatrist. Both of them work as Assistant Professors at Govt. Medical college, Thrissur, Kerala. He has a younger sister Neha Sarin. Nihal is a student of Devamatha CMI Public School, Thrissur city.[5]

References

  1. ↑ "When Chess becomes a language...". ChessBase India. Retrieved 2015-12-01.
  2. ↑ "Mature Beyond His Years". worldchess.com. Retrieved 2016-05-28.
  3. ↑ "Little Nihal Shows Big Promise". The Hindu. Retrieved 2014-01-14.
  4. ↑ "WYCC 2014: The winners and the stories". ChessBase International. Retrieved 2014-10-01.
  5. ↑ "Nihal is World Champion". Mathrubhumi.com. Retrieved 2014-09-30.
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