At 11, Charvi, youngest participant in Women’s World Rapid and Blitz, following in footsteps of Polgar sisters

In 2025, Charvi has made a gain of 200 rating points, thanks to a whirlwind of chess that has seen her travel to Barcelona (Spain), Riga (Latvia), Goa, Graz (Austria), Cannes (France), Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Pune, Budapest (Hungary), Stavanger (Norway), Munich (Germany), Pontevedra (Spain), Dortmund (Germany), Fagernes International Autumn (Norway), Bijeljina (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Agde (France) in the span of the past 12 months.

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Barring a tournament she played in Riga to earn a woman international master norm, she’s played in open sections in other events.

It’s a treacherous path to take for any young player, but one that has been traversed before by the legendary Polgar sisters.

Unlike other kids her age, Charvi also plays only a handful of rapid and blitz tournaments, instead preferring to focus on classical chess. In 2025 in fact, she’s played in just three blitz events and a single rapid tournament.

Starting at 5

Chess came into Charvi’s life when she was just five. Her mother Akhila remembers her coming home from daycare one day pestering them to play chess with her. In a few months time, she got so good that the parents were taking her to state-level competitions.

Charvi won Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar in 2024. (PHOTO: PIB)

“She played in the under-6 state school championship where she ended as the runner-up. That’s when we realised that maybe she is interested in the sport. My husband then started supporting her by looking at the YouTube videos initially. Later, we got an IM from Bengaluru, Sivananda BS, to coach her,” Akhila had told The Indian Express during the Norway Chess Open tournament earlier this year.

But it was only when Charvi claimed the under-8 Girls World Chess Championship in 2022 at the World Cadets in Batumi that the parents realised the true potential of their daughter.

“What we also noticed that day was that she didn’t get too excited by winning a world championship. She was looking at it like a regular win,” says Akhila.

But while the title did not invoke too much enthusiasm in Charvi, she did win the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar (the top award given by the government to kids) from President Droupadi Murmu.

Akhila laughs as she explains just how obsessed the 11-year-old is with the sport.

“After a tournament ends, if we ask her to take a break for two days, that break will be with bullet games or with endless games of chess Puzzle Racer online. Sometime when she loses, the moves will be in her dreams also,” she says before pointing out that Charvi also has a habit of dragging her opponents to a board to analyse their game after it ends. That analysis session to pick on the opponent’s brain after a long classical game could also last for 30 minutes.

Akhila had a 13-year-long career as an IT professional which she gave up to travel full time with Charvi. She also keeps in touch with the school back in Bengaluru to ensure her daughter is not behind in academics as well. But ask her if she’s now well versed in chess as well, and she says: “Not at all. If I got invested in the sport myself then after she plays a match, I wouldn’t be able to stop asking her why played this move or that. In fact, after she’s finished with a game, I don’t even talk first to ask her if she’s won or lost. If she wants to talk, she will tell me.”