Nihal Sarin

Nihal Sarin (born 13 July 2004) is an Indian chess grandmaster and chess Prodigy.

Nihal was born on 13 July 2004 in Thrissur, Kerala, India.

Sarin Abdulsalam, Nihal's father, is a dermatologist while his mother, Shijin Ammanam Veetil Ummar, is a psychiatrist.

He has a younger sister, Neha.

His family spent their first few years in Kottayam.

He could recognize the capitals and the flags of 190 countries by the age of three.

At the same age, he also had managed to know and recite from memory the scientific names of insects and plants.

By the time he was in upper kindergarten, he spoke fluent English, and by the age of six, having just enrolled into the first grade, he knew all the multiplication tables until sixteen.

Nihal began learning chess at the age of six.

In order for his son to not feel bored during school vacations, his father introduced Nihal to a chess set, and his grandfather A. A. Ummar taught him the rules at Kottayam, where he was a student of Excelsior English School.

Nihal's first coach was Mathew Joseph Pottoore, the school's chess coach who instructed him twice a week in the beginning and then gave Sarin special individual classes.

In 2011, Nihal and his family returned to Thrissur where Nihal joined Devamatha CMI Public School.

Nihal won the Kerala State Championship in the Under-07 category in 2011, the Under-09 title twice, the Under-11 title twice and Under-15 title once.

Nihal was the 2013 National Under-9 Champion in Chennai, the 2014 National Under-11 Bronze medalist in Puri, and the 2015 National Under-11 Silver medalist in Pondicherry.

Nihal won the gold medal in the World Blitz Championship in the Under-10 category in Al-Ain in 2013.

At the end of 2013, Nihal began working with Ukrainian GM Dimitri Komarov, an experienced coach with international success in his playing days, whom he met by accident at a tournament while Komarov was coaching the United Arab Emirates team.

Dimitri would go on to coach Nihal for several years.

As a junior player, Nihal was the World Under-10 champion in 2014 and placed second in the 2015 World Under-12 championship.

In the same category, he was the Rapid and Blitz gold medalist in the Asian Youth Championship in Tashkent in 2014.

At the age of 10 in Thodupuzha, Nihal played simultaneously against 112 players of all age categories and won all his games.

Nihal's first big break came at the World Youth Chess Championship in the Under-10 category, which was held in Durban, South Africa in September 2014.

He scored 9/11 to be crowned the Under-10 World Champion.

For this achievement, he was conferred the Candidate Master (CM) title by FIDE.

Right after his World Youth success in 2014, Nihal scored his first victory over a titled player, IM Jonathan Westerberg of Sweden, at the World Junior Championship 2014 in Pune, India.

For a year, Nihal was a regular in all the tournaments of importance held in India, including the National Challengers Championship in Nagpur.

He would regularly hold titled players to draws.

He became runner-up in 2015 State Senior championship in Irinjalakuda at the age of 10 years, thus becoming eligible to represent Kerala in the 2015 National Challengers Championship.

He was twice the State Under-19 Runner-up at the age of 8 and 10 years, respectively.

The next year in 2015, he won the silver medal in the Under-12 category of World Youth Chess Championship in Greece.

In the last rounds of the tournament, Nihal successively defeated the top two seeds of his category: IM Awonder Liang and FM Nodirbek Abdusattorov.

He was conferred the FIDE Master (FM) title by the World chess Federation in the same year as he had crossed live Elo rating of 2300.

He was a guest competitor in the Malayalam TV quiz show Aswamedham in March 2015.

In the 2016 edition of the tournament held in Batumi, Georgia, Nihal tied for the second spot with three others.

He was fourth on tiebreak.

In February 2016, Nihal played his first International Open outside India, the Cappelle-la-Grande Open, and registered his first International Master norm.

In the process, he defeated a grandmaster for the first time in his career.

In Hasselbacken Open 2016 held at the turn of April in Stockholm, Nihal beat Lithuanian grandmaster Eduardas Rozentalis.

In 2018, he passed the Elo rating of 2600 at 14 years old, which at the time made him the third youngest player in history to do so.

Nihal won the Gold Medal as part of the Indian team in the FIDE Online Chess Olympiad 2020.

He won the U-18 World Youth Championship held online in rapid format in 2020.