Reigning World Champion D Gukesh and Abhimanyu Mishra of the USA — the youngest Grandmaster in chess history (Image credit: FIDE File)

Panaji: At 12 years, 4 months and 25 days, Abhimanyu Mishra, an Indian-origin player from the US, became the youngest chess Grandmaster in the world. At 10, he was the youngest International Master (IM). At 16, Abhimanyu stunned D Gukesh to break the 33-year record of Gata Kamsky set in 1992, becoming the youngest player ever to beat a world champion in classical chess.With an Elo rating of 2652, Abhimanyu is the 50th seed here at the World Cup. “My goal here is to play some good chess, and we’ll see how far I go. I mean, my first opponent is Salem; I’ve played him a couple of times in the past. I think we’ve had a couple of draws. It’ll definitely be a very interesting fight,” Abhimanyu told TOI . In the opening round, Abhimanyu defended well with his black pieces to play out a 36-move draw with Salem AR Saleh of the UAE (2620 Elo) on Tuesday.

When asked about chasing records, Abhimanyu said, “I don’t think there’s basically anything left. I mean, these records don’t mean much overall. Like, it’s nice to have that, okay, like you did something. Actually, this experience that I had, in the middle of the pandemic, travelling to a different country and staying there for months. This is something I’ll always carry with me. In such times of, let’s say, desperation and confusion around the world, I was able to do such a great feat. But yeah, apart from the experience, it’s just like this title, not title, let’s say this record, it doesn’t mean so much overall. But it was nice to have that.”Though he has many firsts in his progressing career, Abhimanyu hasn’t made great strides but has improved gradually. His classical Elo rating has only increased by a little over 100 points in the past four years. In contrast, Gukesh, who was a 2500-plus rated player four years ago, is in the 2700 club. “The delay in the breakthrough is because I had to divide my time between both chess and high school,” he said.

“The main issue is that in the last couple of years, I lacked a corporate sponsorship.” Abhimanyu also has a complaint. “There’s no support for chess in America if we compare the same with India. Maybe it’s a bit weird in America. In America, somehow chess isn’t considered as much as a sport.”