Nihal Sarin

Nihal Sarin (born 13 July 2004) is an Indian chess grandmaster and chess prodigy. 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. As a junior player, Nihal was the World Under-10 champion in 2014. In 2015, he tied for first place in the World Under-12 championship, taking the silver medal on tiebreaks. 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. Early childhood 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.