If you look at the talents of Indian chess born in 2006, these are the players you will find:
While all these boys born in 2006 achieved their norms roughly in the same period, December 2018 to January 2019, there was one youngster from Goa Leon Mendonca, equally talented, but was not able to score his norms. Well, Leon was not to be left behind. At the Paracin GM norm tournament in Serbia, he scored his maiden IM norm.
Leon's current rating is 2376 after he gained 26 Elo points at the Rilton Cup 2018-19. He gained 32 Elo points at the Paracin GM Round Robin. This takes his live Elo to 2408! An article with Leon's favourite game and annotations will be published shortly on the ChessBase India newspage.
The interesting thing to note is that Indians are dominating in the list of players born all across the world in 2006. Nine out of the top 16 players in the world born in 2006 are Indians!
Apart from Gukesh, Sreeshwan, Aditya Leon, Pranesh and Pranav mentioned above, we have Shiv Shome, Aditya Samant and Pranav V in the top 16 players in the world born in 2006.
Videos of Indian talents born in 2006 on ChessBase India:
Out of the nine players mentioned in the article Shiv Shome is the only one whom we haven't interviewed yet. We hope to do it soon in the days to come. When ChessBase India began in January 2016 all of these talents were taking their initial steps into the world of chess. Gukesh's rating was just 2041. Both the players and ChessBase India have grown hand in hand. Our coverage has motivated them to do well, and their performance has motivated us to cover them in the best possible way! Well, we are positive that this will continue in the years to come and who knows after a decade, all of these nine stars would be in the top 16 players in the world! Watch out, they are coming!
