15-year-old boy becomes youngest British chess grandmaster | Youth

A 15-year-old chess prodigy has become Britain’s youngest grandmaster.

Shreyas Royal won the prestigious title at the British Chess Championships in Hull on Sunday, breaking the British record set by David Howell in 2007 at the age of 16.

Shreyas achieved his first ‘norm’ at the Bavarian Open in November 2022, the first of three needed to earn the title, and achieved his second in London last December.

The GM norm in chess is a high-level performance standard that a player must achieve in 27 games, normally requiring three separate tournaments, to earn the title of grandmaster.

Watching the Championships from his home in Woolwich Arsenal in south-east London, his father, Jitendra Singh, told the Times: “I’m so proud of Shreyas.

“It’s a huge achievement for him and one he’s been working towards for years. To be the youngest ever British grandmaster is fantastic.”

In 2018, Shreyas’ family had to fight to stay in the country after Singh’s work visa expired and his son had to leave the country he had lived in since the age of three.

The family were to return to India and were told that no exception would be possible unless Singh found a job paying more than £120,000. They appealed to the Home Office on the grounds that Shreyas was a national asset who could become Britain’s first world chess champion, but their request was rejected.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, a former junior chess champion and then Labour MP, and Matthew Pennycook, MP for Greenwich and Woolwich, where Shreyas lived, wrote to two ministers at the time urging them to allow the boy to stay.

The Home Office reconsidered the case and granted Singh a skilled worker visa and leave to remain. The family are now British citizens.

In August last year, Shreyas was invited to face Rishi Sunak, then Prime Minister, at Downing Street to celebrate the government’s decision to invest £1 million in chess.

Shreyas, who began his international career at the age of seven, aims to become the world chess champion by the age of 21. He told the Olympic Games website last year: “I remember imagining this when I was about seven years old. I admit I was very optimistic, but it was a starting point that would keep me hungry to work and get better at chess.”

Dominic Lawson, the chief executive of the English Chess Foundation, told the Times that Shreyas’ “extraordinary promise” was clear in 2018. He said: “He is delivering on that promise. We can’t know how good he will be but I’m sure he will bring more glory to English chess and to the country.”