Pentala Harikrishna

After competing in the 37th Chess Olympiad, he performed badly a month later with shared last place at Aerosvit, though he bounced back with victory at Marx Gyorgy Memorial then won the Chess960 Junior Chess Championship winning the last four games against Arkadij Naiditsch with the final score 4½–3½.

Pentala Harikrishna (born 10 May 1986) is an Indian chess grandmaster.

Harikrishna was a highly successful junior player winning the Indian Under-08 (1993), Under-10 (1995), Under-14 (1999), Under-15 (1998) and Under-18 (1998) titles.

He won the World Under-10 Championship in 1996.

He won the Under 18 prize at the Commonwealth Chess Championship in 1999.

He represented India at seven Chess Olympiads from 2000 to 2012 and won team Bronze at the World Team Chess Championships in 2010.

At the Asian Team Championships, Harikrishna won team gold once, team silver twice and individual bronze once.

His progress was such that, at the age of 14 years 5 months, he joined the Indian team for the 2000 Chess Olympiad, scoring 6.5 out of 11 rounds and earning his first Grandmaster norm.

The second and third norms came soon after with a solid 6.5/13 result placing fifth in Corus Group B and sharing seventh place at the Asian Individual Championship with 7/11.

He became the youngest grandmaster from India after attaining the title in 2001, a record now held by Gukesh D.

He was Commonwealth Champion in 2001, World Junior Champion in 2004, and Asian Individual Champion in 2011.

He is currently third highest rated player in India.

This last norm both qualified him for the FIDE World Chess Championship 2002 (knocked in the first round to Alexander Beliavsky) and secured his Grandmaster title, having reached the required FIDE rating of 2500 in the July 2000 rating list.

Immediately after that he won on tiebreak the Commonwealth Championship, held in London, then claimed first on tiebreak with Alexei Barsov and Krishnan Sasikiran at Hastings Chess Congress at the start of 2002.

Finishing half a point behind Sasikiran in the 2002 National "A" Championship.

Despite a series of weaker results costing him 29 rating points between July 2002 and January 2003, Harikrishna regained nearly all of them the next rating period with third place at Hastings and second place at the National "A" Championship in Mumbai.

He shared second place with Vasilios Kotronias and Paul Motwani in the 2003 British Championships then shared first with Vasily Yemelin, Smbat Lputian and Pavel Kotsur in Abu Dhabi.

Harikrishna's form continued with shared second at the Sharjah Open half a point behind Kotsur, shared seventh at the Parsvanth Open, shared fifth at the Tata Open and second at the Asian Zonal 3.1b tournament held in Dhaka, a point behind Surya Shekhar Ganguly and shared third at GibTelecom Masters, a point behind Nigel Short.

A few months later he came sixth on tiebreaks (a dozen players tied half a point behind Shakriyar Mamedyarov at the strong Dubai Open.

Between the January 2003 and October 2005 rating lists, Harikrishna experienced a steady increase from 2539 to 2673, reaching 2600 in July 2004.

Harikrishna was knocked out of the FIDE World Chess Championship 2004, held in Tripoli, in the second round after rapid tiebreaks 3-1 against Vasyl Ivanchuk but bounced back with fourth place on tiebreaks at the Abu Dhabi Open, half a point behind Dmitry Bocharov.

He came third in the Pune Super GM event, a point behind winner Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu but winning their individual game and was solid for India at the Chess Olympiad.

This string of performances culminated in winning the World Junior Chess Championship held in Kochi, India in November 2004, scoring 10/13 with Tigran L. Petrosian and Zhao Jun half a point behind.

Such success saw invitations to stronger events, such as Bermuda in early 2005 where despite losing to Boris Gelfand in the eighth round, victory in the two last rounds enabled him to catch up with him to tie for first, followed by an even score at Dos Hermanas and fifth on tiebreak at HB Global Challenge.

Harikrishna joined up with former Viswanathan Anand coach Elizbar Ubilava, looking to improve his game.

He then won the Sanjin Hotel Cup, a point clear of the field with 8.5/11.

He tied for second at the Mainz Ordiz Open.

An even result at the Lausanne Masters was followed up by winning the Essent Crown Group in October 2005, scoring 4/6.

December's Chess World Cup 2005 saw Harikrishna defeat Yu Shaoteng 3-1 and Giovanni Vescovi 4-2 before being knocked out in the third round against Alexei Dreev 2.5-1.5, then tied for second at Pamplona, half a point behind Ruslan Ponomariov.

In March 2006, Harikrishna tied for first (fifth on tiebreak) with winner Gabriel Sargissian, Ahmed Adly, Mamedyarov, and Igor-Alexander Nataf at the Reykjavik Open with 7/9.

2007 started on a bad note with 3.5/9 at the Aeroflot Open but he recovered to come third at the Montreal International, losing in the final round to tournament winner Ivanchuk.

Harikrishna tied for first (second on wins tiebreak) at Marx Gyorgy then finished 20th at the Mainz FiNet Rapid Open.

At the end of 2007, he lost 3-1 in the final of the Carlos Torre Memorial to Ivanchuk and came fourth on tiebreak at the Reggio Emilia.

Harikrishna played tournaments less frequently after 2007 but finished fourth at the 2008 Corus Group B with 7.5/13, followed by several team events and winning on tiebreak in September 2008 at the Spice Cup in Lubbock, United States.

He was seeded to the knockout stages of the XXI Carlos Tore Memorial but was eliminated 3-2 by Jan Ehlvest in the quarter finals.

Harikrishna won the Tata Steel Group B in 2012 and the Biel MTO Masters Tournament Open event in 2013.

In February 2013, Harikrishna's FIDE rating passed 2700 for the first time.

He broke into the top ten players in the world in November 2016 with a FIDE rating of 2768.

Pentala Harikrishna was born in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India.

He learned chess at the age of 4 from his grandfather Ranga Rao, who was also his first chess coach.