GMPentala Harikrishna

Pentala Harikrishna grew up in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, where his grandfather Ranga Rao taught him chess at four. He won the world under-10 championship in 1996. At fourteen he made his Olympiad debut for India in Istanbul and earned his first grandmaster norm. In 2001 he became the youngest Indian grandmaster up to that time and won the Commonwealth Championship. He won the World Junior Championship in Kochi in 2004 with ten points from thirteen games. He added the Asian Individual Championship in 2011. Victories in the 2012 Tata Steel B tournament and 2013 Biel Open followed. He helped India win Asian team gold in 2009 and World Team bronze in 2010. He reached the world's top ten in 2016. In 2024 he was part of India's first Olympiad gold-medal team. He married Serbian chess player Nadežda Stojanović in 2018 and settled in Prague, playing club chess for Nový Bor.