Following his victory in the Under-18 category of the World Youth Chess Championships, Siddharth Jagadeesh, 18, returned home to an elated reception by his family and friends, as well as members of the Singapore Chess Federation, at Changi Airport on Oct 16. He was also garlanded with an orchid lei by his sister, Tarini Jagadeesh, 17, at the arrival hall.
Siddharth had won the international tournament, organised by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) in Albania on Oct 15.
However, after a brief family vacation, he was back at the airport, flying to India for the 2025 Chess World Cup in Goa, which started on Oct 30 and will conclude on Nov 27.
The World Cup, unlike other chess tournaments, uses a knockout format, meaning each player is guaranteed only two days of play.
“I was hoping to make it past the first round, but I knew it would not be easy as I was one of the lower seeds in the World Cup,” Siddharth said.
The Singaporean, with a FIDE performance rating of 2491, played two classical games against Australia’s Bobby Cheng (2583) on Nov 1 and 2, a higher-rated opponent ranked among the top 150 players in the world.
The two players tied each other during the first game, but the Australian won the second and advanced to the next round. The early exit prompted Siddharth to return home and take some time to rest and work on his chess.
“I do about 10 to 12 tournaments a year, so my schedule is quite rigorous. For the most part, you play, you come back home for a month at most, analyse past games, fix weaknesses and keep going,” Siddharth noted.
The youth champion’s approach to the games has also evolved as he’s grown older, for he used to be fixated on the ratings as a child.
“There were these weekly games we had in Singapore. I was about nine or ten years old, and if I lost the game, I couldn’t sleep at night.”
In contrast, the games he enjoyed the most were those at the 2025 World Youth Chess Championship.
“I got off to a very fast start. At some point, I was seven and a half out of eight, but I tried to leave every game behind me. Win or lose, I just focused on the next game and on doing my best each time.”
The most memorable match was the one during the 2024 Sharjah Masters in the UAE, where he played against Russia’s Andrey Esipenko, who had a FIDE performance rating of 2700 at the time.
“That’s the pinnacle of chess. At any given moment, there are only about 30 players with a 2700 rating worldwide,” Siddharth explained.
“I was not scared, I wasn’t playing to draw, I was just playing to play, and it’s probably still my best game, and I got Grandmaster for that,” he added. Siddharth is Singapore’s fifth and youngest Grandmaster, the highest FIDE title a chess player can achieve.
To become a Grandmaster is no small feat. It typically takes around 10 years of dedicated play, along with a FIDE rating of 2500 and three performance norms, to prove a player can perform at the highest level.
Siddharth is especially grateful for his family – his parents and younger sister – for their support since he began competing at the age of seven. His father is an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University, while his mother works as a transformation director in the banking industry.
The Singapore Chess Federation has also sponsored Siddharth since he became a Grandmaster in May 2024, including sponsoring tournaments that they believe will help improve his performance.
One such tournament is the inaugural Asian Mind Sports Conference & Festival, which will be at the Suntec Convention Centre from Nov 13 to 15.
The event will bring together top athletes from four mind sports: Chess, Contract Bridge, Weiqi (also known as Go), and Xiangqi (also known as Chinese Chess), with a total prize pool of over S$40,000.
Keving Goh, CEO of the Singapore Chess Federation, said: “Hosting the FIDE World Chess Championship last year greatly increased interest and participation in chess at all levels. I believe this festival will spark that same enthusiasm.”
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21 Nov 2024 18:25
