Chess prodigy and Grandmaster Dommaraju Gukesh has now become India’s top chess player, beating a ratings record held by Viswanathan Anand for 36 years. This comes after the 17-year-old Gukesh qualified for the third round of the FIDE Chess World Cup, a major single-elimination tournament being held in Baku, Azerbaijan. His live rating is now 2755.9, narrowly beating Anand’s 2754.0.

Gukesh is also Anand’s protege, and saw a meteoric rise in rankings after breaking into the top 100 in 2023. His current world ranking by FIDE is 11, out of the pool of active players. Earlier this July, he also became the youngest chess player to cross the 2750 mark, edging past five-time World Champion Magnus Carlsen, who has been World No. 1 since July 2011.