12-year-old Indian one of youngest grandmasters

On Twitter, #Grandmaster was a top trend after Chennai’s 12-year-old R. Praggnanandhaa made history.

Tweeps were quick to call the chess prodigy “India’s pride” and the hashtag received more than 9,000 tweets.

Indian chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion Vishwanathan Anand congratulated Praggnanandhaa’s on his achievement and posted: “Welcome to the club and congrats Praggnanandhaa!! See [you] soon in Chennai?”

US sports channel, ESPN’s journalist @ninansusan posted: “…Pragnnandhaa becomes the world’s second youngest and India’s youngest GM. He completed his third norm without having to win a point after being paired with GM Pruijssers Roeland in the final round of the 4th Gredine Open,” Her comment was retweeted by Anand.

@ChessbaseIndia, said: “He is not even 13 and he is a grandmaster! The poster boy of Indian chess - R. Praggnanandhaa!” As per their online website, India has 47 grandmaster as of 2017.

@vinayakkm, an engineer by profession tweeted: “I know there is a massive result [for the] #WorldCup, but it looks India’s Praggnanandhaa (12 years, 10 months old) has become the second youngest grandmaster of all time!

At just 12 years, 10 months and 13 days, Praggnanandhaa missed out on becoming the youngest ever champion by three months, as Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine, bagged the record at 12 years and 7 months in 2002.