Ashwath Kaushik

Ashwath Kaushik: The Eight-Year-Old Who Beat a Grandmaster

On February 18, 2024, at the Burgdorf Open in Switzerland, an eight-year-old sat across the board from a Polish grandmaster and did not blink. When the game ended, Ashwath Kaushik had done something no one his age had ever managed in the recorded history of classical chess: he had beaten a grandmaster, at eight years and 172 days old, in a tournament game played with full classical time controls rather than the faster formats where upsets are more common.

From Jigsaw Puzzles to Chess

Kaushik was born in India and moved to Singapore as a toddler, around one year old, where he has been raised since. He came to chess almost by accident. As a small child he gravitated toward jigsaw puzzles and Lego before his parents introduced him to chess at age four years and four months, using the ChessKids app and YouTube tutorials rather than formal lessons. What began as one more puzzle for a child who liked puzzles turned, within a few years, into a serious competitive pursuit — a trajectory his family did not initially engineer but came to fully support once his aptitude became obvious.

A Family Operation

Kaushik's rise has been a family project as much as an individual one. His father, Kaushik Sriram, handles tournament planning and coaching coordination. His mother took a career break to accompany him to competitions, acting as both mental coach and manager on the road. His younger brother cheers him on from home. Alongside that family structure sits a rotating cast of professional coaches — FM Tigran Gyozalyan was his first, followed by GM Ilja Zaragatski, WIM Tijana Mandura, FM Balaji G, and GM Stany G A — plus a place in the Singapore Chess Federation's National Training Programme, the country's pipeline for developing elite young players.

That coaching is backed by a demanding routine: roughly two hours of training after school on weekdays, built around puzzle rush exercises and online rapid games, expanding to six or seven hours of coaching and practice games on weekends. He solves hundreds of tactical puzzles a week, often without a physical board in front of him — training the ability to visualize positions purely in his head, a skill that becomes increasingly important as players face stronger, more calculating opponents. He also attends school on an accelerated academic track, timing family holidays around tournament calendars to balance both.

Beating GM Jacek Stopa

The record-breaking win came against GM Jacek Stopa of Poland at the 22nd Burgdorfer Stadthaus Open. It was not Kaushik's first brush with grandmaster-level competition — a year earlier he had come close in a long game against another strong opponent but missed a winning chance and had to settle for a draw. This time he converted. "I am excited and proud at beating my first GM," Kaushik said afterward. "I had come close a year back at the end of a long game but missed a winning chance, to draw finally. I was looking forward to breaking this record, and was really happy I could achieve it." His father added: "I am very happy as this was his long-time aim, to test himself against top players. This is just the start of a long journey, and hope he continues to work hard, and to enjoy his chess."

At the same tournament, Kaushik also won the best junior prize in the under-12 category — notable given he was competing, and winning junior honors, against children years older than himself. Months earlier, in 2023, he had taken third place in the under-12 category at the Eastern Asian Championship in Hainan, China, another result achieved well below his age bracket's typical competitive level.

A Style of His Own

Beyond the headline result, those who have watched Kaushik play describe a player with unusually sharp tactical awareness for his age, consistently scoring around 45 correct puzzles in three-minute puzzle battles — a benchmark associated with strong adult club players, not third-graders. He has also adopted what amounts to a personal playing philosophy: a self-imposed no-draw policy, pushing games to their technical limits rather than accepting early peace, and an openly stated preference for aggressive, attacking chess and the aesthetic pleasure of a well-timed sacrifice over the safer calculus of results alone. Asked about his ambitions, he has said he wants to become a "super GM" — the informal term for grandmasters who reach the very top tier of world ratings — and to be known specifically for that attacking style.

Why Ashwath Is Called a Genius

The specific cognitive feat behind Kaushik's headline achievement is real and measurable: at eight years old, he calculated accurately enough, under full classical time controls, to outplay an opponent with decades more experience and a title earned through years of proven results against adults. That requires more than memorized opening theory — it requires the ability to visualize positions many moves ahead, evaluate them correctly under pressure, and avoid the kind of tactical errors that experienced players are specifically trained to punish. His puzzle-solving speed and his habit of training without a physical board both point to an unusually developed capacity for abstract spatial calculation at an age when most children are still learning to read fluently.

The honest counter-case is that one win against one grandmaster, however historic as a record, is a single data point rather than proof of sustained elite strength; Kaushik is not yet competing near the top of world rankings, and "youngest to beat a GM" is a record about age, not about overall playing strength relative to adult professionals. His achievement also rests on an unusually intensive, family-built support structure — five different coaches, a national training program, a parent who left her career to manage his schedule — that shaped and accelerated a talent rather than existing independently of it.

Legacy

Whatever Kaushik's career ultimately becomes, the record he set on February 18, 2024, is fixed: no one younger has beaten a grandmaster in classical chess. His own words suggest he understands the record for what it is — a beginning rather than a conclusion, a marker on what he and his father both describe as a long journey still very much underway.