Pentala Harikrishna (born 10 May 1986) is an Indian chess grandmaster. He became the youngest grandmaster from India after attaining the title in 2001, a record now held by Gukesh D. He was Commonwealth Champion in 2001, World Junior Champion in 2004, and Asian Individual Champion in 2011. He is currently third highest rated player in India. Harikrishna won the Tata Steel Group B in 2012 and the Biel MTO Masters Tournament Open event in 2013. He represented India at seven Chess Olympiads from 2000 to 2012 and won team Bronze at the World Team Chess Championships in 2010. At the Asian Team Championships, Pentala won team gold once, team silver twice and individual bronze once. In February 2013, Harikrishna's FIDE rating passed 2700 for the first time. He broke into the top ten players in the world in November 2016 with a FIDE rating of 2768. Early life Pentala Harikrishna was born in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India. He learned chess at the age of 4 from his grandfather Ranga Rao, who was also his first chess coach. Chess career Junior Pentala was a highly successful junior player winning the Indian Under-08 (1993), Under-10 (1995), Under-14 (1999), Under-15 (1998) and Under-18 (1998) titles. He won the Under 18 prize at the Commonwealth Chess Championship in 1999. He won the World Under-10 Championship in 1996. His progress was such that, at the age of 14 years 5 months, he joined the Indian team for the 2000 Chess Olympiad, scoring 6.5 out of 11 rounds and earning his first Grandmaster norm. The second and third norms came soon after with a solid 6.5/13 result placing fifth in Corus Group B and sharing seventh place at the Asian Individual Championship with 7/11. This last norm both qualified him for the FIDE World Chess Championship 2002 (knocked in the first round to Alexander Beliavsky) and secured his Grandmaster title, having reached the required FIDE rating of 2500 in the July 2000 rating list. 2001–2004 Immediately after that he won on tiebreak the Commonwealth Championship, held in London, then claimed first on tiebreak with Alexei Barsov and Krishnan Sasikiran at Hastings Chess Congress at the start of 2002. Finishing half a point behind Sasikiran in the 2002 National "A" Championship. Despite a series of weaker results costing him 29 rating points between July 2002 and January 2003, Pentala regained nearly all of them the next