SPORTS · KARNATAKA

The chess champion who says: I either win or learn

Karnataka’s Charvi Anilkumar won the Under-8 world chess title at eight and the national Bal Puraskar at nine — and by eleven had crossed a 2300 live rating, a mark ChessBase India calls the second-youngest ever reached by a girl.

By The Young Achievers2 min readSources checked 22 October 2026

✓ Verified · Age 9

Charvi Anilkumar · Born 2014 (FIDE record); 9 at the award in January 2024

Filed under: Sports · Karnataka · Chess

Charvi Anilkumar with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, holding her Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar 2024 tote bag printed with her name

Charvi Anilkumar with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Bal Puraskar awardees’ meeting, holding the award tote printed with her name · Photograph: PIB (via ChessBase India) · Image source ↗

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A golden year

In 2022, when she was eight, Charvi became the Under-8 World Chess Champion at Batumi, Georgia, scoring 9.5 points from 11 games, and the Under-8 Commonwealth Chess Champion in Sri Lanka. At the Asian Youth Chess Championship in Bali that year, the official award background note records, she won five gold medals and one silver; at home she had already been national champion at Under-7, Under-8 and Under-10.

On 22 January 2024, aged nine, she received the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in the Sports category from President Droupadi Murmu.

Still climbing

Charvi now holds the FM (FIDE Master) title. ChessBase India reported that during 2025 her live rating climbed from 1900 to cross 2300 at the age of eleven — becoming, in ChessBase India’s words, the second youngest girl in the world to reach that mark.

In a published talk she explained how she studies: first she analyses her own games without a computer and notes her mistakes; only then does she check the computer’s lines. Her motto, she said, is simple: “I either win or learn.”

✳ A spark to explore

Charvi checks every move for blunders before she plays it. What is one decision in your own life where a “blunder check” — pausing to look for the mistake first — would help you most? That is a question from us, not part of her record.