A remarkable 15-year-old chess talent has become the youngest grandmaster in Britain.
Shreyas Royal earned this esteemed title at the British Chess Championships held in Hull on Sunday, surpassing David Howell’s UK record set when he was 16 in 2007.
Shreyas secured his first “norm” at the Bavarian Open in November 2022, which is the first of three necessary to attain the grandmaster title, and he achieved his second in London last December.
In chess, a GM norm represents a significant performance standard that a player must meet over 27 games, generally requiring participation in three separate tournaments, to qualify for the grandmaster title.
As he watched the championships from their home in Woolwich Arsenal, southeast London, his father, Jitendra Singh, expressed to The Times: “I am extremely proud of Shreyas.
“It is a monumental achievement for him and one he has been striving for over the years. Being the youngest British grandmaster is truly fantastic.”
In 2018, Shreyas’s family confronted challenges in maintaining their residency in the UK after Singh’s work visa expired, putting Shreyas at risk of being required to leave the country he had called home since he was three.
They faced the possibility of returning to India and were informed that no exceptions would be made unless Singh landed a job paying above £120,000. They appealed to the Home Office, arguing that Shreyas was a national asset capable of becoming England’s first world chess champion, but their appeal was rejected.
At that time, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, a former junior chess champion and Labour MP, along with Matthew Pennycook, the MP for Greenwich and Woolwich where Shreyas resided, wrote to two cabinet ministers urging them to allow the boy to remain in the UK.
The Home Office reevaluated the case and ultimately granted Singh a skilled worker visa and permission to stay. The family has since become British citizens.
Last August, Shreyas was invited to Downing Street to play against Rishi Sunak, who was then the Prime Minister, to celebrate the government’s commitment of £1 million to support chess.
Shreyas, who embarked on his international chess journey at the age of seven, has set his sights on becoming the world chess champion by age 21. He shared with the Olympics website last year: “I remember setting this goal when I was about seven. I acknowledge I was quite optimistic, but it was intended as a starting point to keep my motivation alive in improving my chess skills.”
Dominic Lawson, president of the English Chess Foundation, remarked to The Times that Shreyas’s “extraordinary promise” was evident in 2018. He stated: “He is fulfilling that promise. While we can’t predict how exceptional he will become, I am confident he will bring greater honor to English chess and to the nation.”
