CHANDIGARH: Jiaana Garg, a student at Strawberry Field High School, Chandigarh, made history by achieving the rare feat of getting an International Fide (World Chess Federation) rating at the tender age of 5 years and 11 months. Her first ever rating that appeared on the Fide website on May 1, 2024 is 1558. She is the only female rated player in the world who got a rating at the age of 5 years and 11 months. At the time when children of her age are busy playing with dolls, she made it a point to be a chess player like her elder brother who recently won two medals for India.
She has been participating in different fide ratings chess tournaments for the last two years. This year she has started scoring against the rated players to get her first Fide rating. In the 3rd matrix Fide Rating Chess tournament, she scored 2.5 points (won two games and drew one to earn 2.5 points) against 8 rated players to get her first Fide Rating.
Jiaana was trained and mentored by Naveen Bansal “She has been the only child in my training career of more than 15 years, who started taking chess classes at the age of 4.5 years. At first, I refused to start with her as usually we don’t take children less than the age of 5. But her mother sent me a video of the child just to convince me that she is disciplined and can focus on chess class, ” said Naveen Bansal.
“After a few months of training by looking at her pickup and dedication, for experiment’s sake, we put her in our most advanced batch with the idea that she could just listen to my lectures, doesn’t matter how much she understands. We realised she started responding at par with other children who were all rated and were much older (double or triple) to her age. That was the turning point for us to think about differently about her. We started focusing on her more in a professional way. Here it is important to mention that the role of her mother Priyanka Garg was remarkable. Without the role of the parent, no coach in the world can make a child of her age anything at the world level. It’s always a coordination of the parent, coach and child” added Naveen Bansal.
Following is the list of tournaments she participated in: -
1. 6th Holi Cup Lakecity Open International FIDE Rating Chess Tournament 2024
2. 3rd Matrix Cup International Open Fide Rated Chess Tournament 2024
3. 36th National Under-11 Girls Chess Championship-2023
4. 1st Matrix Cup International Open Fide Rating Chess Tournament 2023
5. 5th Holi Cup International Lakecity Open FIDE Rating Chess Tournament 2023
6. 14th KIIT International Chess Festival - 2023 (Category 'C' - Below 1600)
7. 1st Late Shri Dhiraj Singh Raghuvanshi Memorial Open Fide Rating Tournament 2023
8. 5th Holi Cup International Lakecity Open FIDE Rating Chess Tournament 2023