05 August 2024 , 17:39
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Shreyas Royal, whose family was granted visa after appeal by Rachel Reeves, aspires to become world chess champion by 21
A 15-year-old chess prodigy has become the youngest British grandmaster.
Shreyas Royal achieved the prestigious title at the British Chess Championships in Hull on Sunday, breaking David Howell’s UK record, at the age of 16, in 2007.
Shreyas achieved his first “norm” at the Bavarian Open in November 2022, the first of three required to earn the title, and scored his second in London last December.
A GM norm in chess is a high-level performance benchmark that a player must achieve over a total of 27 games, which typically would require three separate tournaments, to earn the title of grandmaster.
Speaking as he watched the championships from his home in Woolwich Arsenal, south-east London, his father, Jitendra Singh, told he Times: “I am so extremely proud of Shreyas.
“It is a huge achievement for him and one he has been working towards for many years. To be the youngest ever British grandmaster is fantastic.”
In 2018, Shreyas’s family faced a battle to remain in the country, after Singh’s work visa expired and his son faced having to leave the country he had lived in since he was three.
The family would have had to return to India and they were told there could be no exception unless Singh secured a job paying over £120,000. They appealed to the Home Office on the grounds that Shreyas was a national asset who could become England’s first world chess champion, but were declined.
The chancellor Rachel Reeves, a former junior chess champion and then a Labour MP, and Matthew Pennycook, the MP for Greenwich and Woolwich, where Shreyas lived, wrote to two cabinet ministers at the time urging them to let the boy stay.
The Home Office reconsidered the case and granted Singh a visa for skilled workers and leave to remain. The family are now British citizens.
In August last year, Shreyas was invited to Downing Street to take on Rishi Sunak, then the prime minister, to mark the government’s decision to put £1m into chess.
Shreyas, who began his international career at the age of seven, aspires to become the world chess champion by the age of 21. He told the Olympics website last year: “I recall setting this when I was around seven years old. I will admit I was very optimistic, but it was set as a starting point that would keep me hungry to work and get better at chess.”
Dominic Lawson, the president of the English Chess Foundation, told the Times that Shreyas’s “extraordinary promise” was clear in 2018. He said: “He is living up to that promise. We cannot know how good he will become, but I am sure that he will bring more honour to English chess and to the country.”