World junior championship – The Hindu

Pranav has become the fourth Indian after Viswanathan Anand, P. Harikrishna, and Abhijeet Gupta to claim the World junior chess crown.
| Photo Credit: FIDE

V. Pranav is the new World junior chess champion. He won the title after drawing his 11th and final round game with Matic Lavrencic of Slovenia at Petrovac (Montenegro).

The draw took Pranav’s tally to nine points. He had begun the campaign as the second seed behind Daniel Dardha of Belgium.

Pranav, who has an Elo rating of 2615, is the fourth Indian to win the World junior title. Viswanathan Anand, in whose WestBridge Anand Chess Academy he is a trainee, was the first, in 1987. P. Harikrishna (2004) and Abhijeet Gupta (2008) are the others.

So the World junior title is coming back to India after a gap of 17 years. Last year, Divya Deshmukh had won the World junior girls’ title.

Pranav had completed his Grandmaster title in 2022. Last year, he won the World under-18 crowns in both the blitz and rapid categories. Before that he had won the Challengers title in the Chennai Grand Masters in a strong field.

Pranav’s is the latest of important World titles for Indian chess. The past few months have seen India win the twin gold at the Chess Olympiad and D. Gukesh being crowned as the youngest World champion in history.