Picture this.
465 kids. None older than 7.
All staring down 64 squares like the fate of the world depends on the next move. ♟️
Welcome to Nagpur this week.
The 39th National U-7 Open and Girls Chess Championship kicked off today at GHRIET, Wadi-Hingna Link Road.
It's back in Nagpur after 21 long years.
Five days.
Nine rounds.
₹5,00,000 in prize money.
And a one-way ticket to the U-7 Asian and U-8 World Championships for the winners.
Yes, world-level chess. At age seven.
Let that 465 figure sink in. These aren't kids being dragged to a hobby class.
These are 20 states, 62 internationally rated players, and parents who've already memorised FIDE rating tables.
👦 265 boys in the open section (48 FIDE-rated)
👧 146 girls in the girls' section (14 FIDE-rated)
🏠 76 players from home-state Maharashtra
🏆 ₹50,000 to the winner of each category
🥇 Top 20 in each group walk away with trophies and cash
In the open section, all eyes are on Lavik Ram Vislavath from Telangana.
ELO: 1591. Age: single digit. 🤯
In the girls' group, West Bengal's Udhriti Bhattacharya (1529) leads the charge.
For context — most adults who've played chess their whole lives never cross 1500.
These kids did it before learning cursive.
The inauguration wasn't done by a politician or a bureaucrat.
It was done by Divya Deshmukh.
Nagpur's own. 19 years old.
The youngest-ever FIDE Women's World Cup champion, who stunned Koneru Humpy in the 2025 final and earned her Grandmaster title in the process.
Imagine being 6, gripping your first tournament pen, looking up — and she's the one starting your clock.
That's a core memory being minted in real time. ✨
India already has the world chess champion in Gukesh.
It has the women's World Cup winner in Divya.
And now, in a quiet engineering college in Nagpur, the next wave is making its first competitive moves.
This isn't a children's tournament.
It's a scouting ground for the next decade of Indian chess.
The pipeline isn't coming.
It's already here — and it's barely tall enough to see over the board.
That's all for now!
