Before the Crown
Hi!
Most stories about great chess players begin at the wrong moment. They begin after the results, after the titles.
This post is about three grandmasters before all the "good stuff". I care about this because every decent chess player knows how a top class player is doing nowadays, but most of us don't know a bit about their childhoods.
Before ratings mattered. Before careers were planned. Before anyone knew what they would become. All GMs grew up at a certain moment. Here, I focus only on their childhoods. I also want to point out that if you want a standard biography, visit Wikipedia, because this post is not about that. I want a more "human" perspective, with fun facts and stories that you probably haven't heard before. I am sure you will learn something.
For each player, I include a game they played when they were still kids. The games are imperfect. That is the point.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
He was born on May 29, 2006, in Chennai, into a family with no grand chess tradition. His mother, Padmakumari, is a microbiologist. His father, Rajinikanth, is an ENT surgeon, so chess was not inherited.
He learned the game at the age of seven at Velammal School, during extracurricular activities. Even then, something stood out. His first coach, Bhaskar V, noticed that this was not a child casually enjoying a board game. Gukesh was still in Standard 1 when his potential became impossible to ignore. Soon after, he was introduced to Vijay Anand Chess Academy, where his days began to revolve entirely around sixty-four squares.
Those days were long. Brutally long. Training often started around 9:30 in the morning and stretched into the evening. Seventy puzzles a day! His mother often had to remind him to eat and sleep, not kidding. At one point, Gukesh was known to play from 10 a.m. until 11 p.m. at his trainer’s house.
"To see a 17-year-old emerge victorious on such a prestigious stage fills me with immense pride. Gukesh's victory is an inspiration to countless aspiring chess players."
— Viswanathan Anand
School slowly faded into the background. After Standard 4, Gukesh left formal education entirely to focus on chess. By 11, he was already an International Master. By 12, a Grandmaster. He missed becoming the youngest GM in history by just 17 days, but still became the youngest in India. To reach that level, he played close to 230 games a year! Childhood, for Gukesh, happened mostly in tournament halls.
One of the most unusual decisions in his development came from GM Vishnu Prasanna. At just eleven years old, Gukesh was asked not to use chess engines until reaching a certain rating threshold. Gukesh accepted without hesitation. The result was a player forced to trust calculation, intuition, and practical sense. According to Vishnu, this made him precise.
Even then, Gukesh dreamed dangerously early. As a child, he openly said he wanted to become the youngest world chess champion.
Behind the scenes, support mattered. In 2017, his father quit his job to travel with him to tournaments. Friends helped sponsor his early career. And looming quietly in the background was Viswanathan Anand. Through the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy, Gukesh trained in an environment inspired by the Soviet chess school. Anand later advised him to work with Grzegorz Gajewski, one of his own former seconds.
Despite the intensity, Gukesh was still a child. He loved pani puri. Watched YouTube compilations. Enjoyed cricket and badminton casually. Read Tinkle comics. His favorite movie was Baahubali 2. His best friend was fellow prodigy Leon Mendonca. Serious on the board, normal off it.
Among the many games of his early years, one stands out even today. Played at the Under-11 National Championship in Pune, against Praneeth Vuppala, it featured a fearless double bishop sacrifice. Not computer-approved brilliance, but human courage. The kind that reveals instinct rather than preparation. It is often cited as the game where Gukesh himself felt he played best as a child.
Nice game from Gukesh. The double bishop sacrifice is astounding!
If Gukesh represents focus and structure, Hikaru was something else entirely. Hikaru Nakamura was born on December 9, 1987, in Hirakata, Osaka, Japan. He was the youngest child in a family where chess was not a hobby but a language. His father, Shigeru Nakamura, was a nine-time Japanese chess champion. His mother, Carolyn, is a two-time winner of the Japanese Women’s Championship. He learned the game around the age of four or five, mostly by watching his older siblings play at home.
When he was two years old, the family moved from Japan to the United States. By childhood, America was home. He would later become a naturalized U.S. citizen, but culturally and competitively, his chess identity formed early and aggressively.
Unlike many prodigies shaped by rigid academies, Hikaru’s development was fast and confrontational. He liked complications. His ability to calculate deeply at speed became obvious very early, as did his willingness to enter positions others avoided.
By his early teens, results came quickly. In 2003, at just 15 years and 79 days old, Hikaru became the youngest grandmaster in history at the time. That same year, he finished second at the Chicago Open, behind GM Alexander Stripunsky, announcing himself nationally. A few weeks later, he won the National Chess Congress, defeating Vinay Bhat in tiebreaks to claim his first major title and a prize fund that most teenagers could not imagine.
There is a story from that period that captures his personality well. While playing for his high school, he faced IM John Fedorowicz and reached a clearly winning position. Instead of finishing the game, Hikaru resigned deliberately and began explaining ideas from the position, reportedly turning it into an impromptu mathematics and calculation lesson. The game later became famous and is often cited as an example of his unconventional attitude and confidence at a very young age.
In 2004, still a teenager, Hikaru played a four-game match against GM Evgeny Bareev with a $100,000 prize on the line. He won the match with a game to spare. Then declined the prize money, stating that chess was not a sport. Whether principled, impulsive, or ironic, the moment reflected a player unconcerned with convention.
In 2005, at just 17, Hikaru became the youngest US Champion in history, a record that inevitably invited comparisons to Bobby Fischer. Unlike Fischer, Hikaru did not isolate himself from competition. He sought it out.
One of the games from this period captures that spirit perfectly. Played while he was still 13 years old, it shows the raw Nakamura style before refinement, before streaming, before speed chess dominance.
Where Hikaru thrived on confrontation, Magnus grew through freedom. Long before Magnus Carlsen became a chess prodigy, his talent showed itself in a different way. As a small child, his memory and pattern recognition were already extraordinary. By the age of five, he knew the flag, capital, and population of nearly every country in the world. Soon after, he memorized all 422 Norwegian municipalities along with their coats of arms. This came years before chess became central in his life.
Born on November 30, 1990, in Tønsberg, Norway, Magnus grew up in a family that valued curiosity and independence. His parents, Sigrun Øen and Henrik Carlsen, quickly noticed that their son learned differently. At two years old, he solved complex jigsaw puzzles. At four, he built advanced Lego sets meant for much older children.
Magnus was introduced to chess by his father at the age of five. At first, he was not particularly enthusiastic. What changed everything was competition. A defining aspect of Magnus’ childhood was the way his parents approached his development. Chess was never forced. His father, Henrik, was passionate about the game but deliberately avoided pushing for results. Magnus was allowed to decide how much he wanted to play, when to train, and how seriously to take it.
“I started by just sitting by the chessboard exploring things. I didn’t even have books at first, and I just played by myself.”
— Magnus Carlsen
As his strength grew, Magnus began working with GM Simen Agdestein, a former Norwegian international footballer and grandmaster. Progress was steady rather than explosive, but once it came, it was unmistakable. Around the age of eleven, Magnus was already the strongest player in Norway across several age groups. Still, media attention was limited, and his childhood remained relatively normal by today’s standards.
One of the most important periods of his early life came in 2003, when the Carlsen family made an unusual decision. They rented out their apartment, bought a van, and spent about a year traveling across Europe. Magnus played tournaments along the way, while the family homeschooled their children and visited historical and cultural sites. The experience helped Magnus mature both as a player and as a person. He later credited this period as fundamental to his development.
By his early teens, Magnus was competing with grandmasters regularly. Losses came, sometimes in clusters, but his reaction was always the same. He wanted to understand, adapt, and come back stronger. There was no panic, no pressure from home, and no obsession with immediate results.
From a childhood defined by memory, curiosity, and independence, Magnus Carlsen built the foundations of a style that would later define him as world champion and arguably the best chess player in history.
The following game is his first-ever official win, when he was just 8.
To wrap up, looking at these childhoods side by side, one thing becomes clear. There is no single path to greatness in chess. Magnus grew through freedom and curiosity, Hikaru through intensity and early competition, and Gukesh through calm focus in a new generation raised alongside engines. The destinations look similar, but the roads could not be more different.
What unites them is not early trophies or perfect games, but a deep relationship with the board that began very young. Each of them discovered chess in a personal way, and each found reasons to stay with it when progress was slow, when losses hurt, and when no one could guarantee success.
The games included in this post are not masterpieces in the traditional sense. That is exactly why they matter. Inside them, you can already glimpse the instincts, ideas, and personalities that would later define three of the greatest players of our time. For me, watching imperfect games helps me because they are understandable yet complex enough to be studied.
If you reached the end, I would love to know what you think. Which childhood story surprised you the most? Did any of the games feel familiar or inspiring? And do you believe greatness in chess is shaped more by talent, by work, or by the circumstances around a young player?
See you soon!
