20-year-old IM Kazybek Nogerbek was solely the ninth seed however edged out 13 grandmasters to win the 2024 FIDE World Junior Chess Championship. The Woman’s part was dominated by 18-year-old top-seed IM Divya Deshmukh from India, who gained with an undefeated 10/11 rating.
The World Junior Chess Championship came about in Gandhinagar, India, from June 2-13. The Open part had a complete of 226 gamers, whereas 101 participated within the Women part.
World Junior Chess Championship: Open
| Rank | Title | FED | Score | Factors | |
| 1 | IM | Kazybek Nogerbek | 2502 | 8.5 | |
| 2 | GM | Emin Ohanyan | 2501 | 8.5 | |
| 3 | GM | Luka Budisavljevic | 2468 | 8 | |
| 4 | GM | Mamikon Gharibyan | 2492 | 8 | |
| 5 | IM | Tobias Koelle | 2470 | 8 | |
| 6 | GM | Aleksey Grebnev | 2540 | 7.5 | |
| 7 | GM | Jose Gabriel Cardoso Cardoso | 2497 | 7.5 | |
| 8 | IM | Rudik Makarian | 2524 | 7.5 | |
| 9 | IM | Daniel Quizon | 2448 | 7.5 | |
| 10 | GM | Pranav Anand | 2540 | 7.5 |
World Junior Chess Championship: Women
| Rank | Title | Title | FED | Score | Factors |
| 1 | IM | Divya Deshmukh | 2456 | 10 | |
| 2 | WIM | Mariam Mkrtchyan | 2300 | 9.5 | |
| 3 | WIM | Ayan Allahverdiyeva | 2133 | 8.5 | |
| 4 | WFM | Gupta Shubhi | 1943 | 8 | |
| 5 | WGM | Ravi Rakshitta | 2271 | 7.5 | |
| 6 | Narmin Abdinova | 2121 | 7.5 | ||
| 7 | WFM | Rindhiya V | 1965 | 7.5 | |
| 8 | WIM | Dehankar Mrudul | 2028 | 7.5 | |
| 9 | WIM | Sofiia Hryzlova | 2246 | 7 | |
| 10 | Kseniya Norman | 2134 | 7 |
For full standings, see Chess-Outcomes.com.
Open Part
If the identify Kazybek Nogerbek does not ring a bell, it actually ought to now. The 20-year-old from Astana joins the distinguished checklist of world junior champions after scoring 8.5/11 factors, ending on higher tiebreaks than GM Emin Ohanyan from Armenia. GM Luka Budisavljevic from Serbia took the bronze medal with eight factors.
FIDE World Junior Chess Champion, 🇰🇿 Nogerbek Kazybek, receiving his trophy. pic.twitter.com/uk64pycgcn
— Worldwide Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) June 13, 2024
The World Junior title is not Nogerbek’s first main title. In 2023 he gained each the speedy and blitz titles within the World Youth U18 Championship. Earlier than that, he made headlines in the course of the 2022 Chess Olympiad, the place he began with 6/6 and ended up scoring a superb 8.5/10 on the fourth board.
He had already fulfilled all the necessities for the grandmaster title earlier this yr and did not want the direct title that’s given to the world junior champion.
Going into the ultimate spherical, GM Mamikon Gharibyan from Armenia was in sole lead with eight factors, half some extent forward of 4 gamers, together with Nogerbek. The 2 confronted off within the remaining spherical, with the Armenian making an important mistake in time hassle whereas making an attempt to defend a tough ending.
The emotional remaining moments of the sport, together with a short interview with Nogerbek, had been coated by ChessBase India: “It feels superb. To me this can be a very massive feeling,” the brand new world champion mentioned.
He identified that he’s the second Kazakh to turn out to be world junior champion, as GM Darmen Sadvakasov, the present President of the Kazakh Chess Federation, gained the title in 1998.
The World Junior Championship (Below 20 years) has an extended historical past that goes again to the inaugural occasion in 1951. Former world junior champions embrace legends reminiscent of Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, and Viswanathan Anand, who all finally gained the World Chess Championship.
Nonetheless, lately, extra enticing tournaments have emerged, and high juniors are not prioritizing the occasion. In 2018 a complete of 26 grandmasters took half, whereas the quantity has dropped to 13 this yr. Among the many 15 final world junior champions, solely GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (2009) and GM Yu Yangyi (2013) have made it to the world’s top-10.
This yr’s version noticed simply two of the world’s top-30 juniors take part. Certainly one of them was 15-year-old top-seed GM Abhimanyu Mishra, the world’s youngest grandmaster ever, who had a disastrous event and withdrew after scoring 4/7.
The American prodigy confronted 5 Indians with a mean ranking of 2068, nearly 600 factors decrease than himself. All of them appeared closely underrated, reminiscent of his 2132-rated opponent in spherical one, Harshit Pawar, who completed it off in type.
For Pawar the event was an enormous success as he went on to attain an IM norm, gaining a whopping 175 ranking factors.
Women Part
The Woman’s part was unsurprisingly dominated by Indian residence favourite Divya, who went undefeated to win on 10/11. Whereas the 18-year-old held on to the only real lead from the sixth spherical onward, WIM Mariam Mkrtchyan from Armenia at all times stayed inside putting distance. She completed simply half some extent behind on an undefeated 9.5 factors. The bronze medal went to WIM Ayan Allahverdiyeva from Azerbaijan.
As within the Open, the Women part was lacking many of the top-rated gamers with Divya, Mkrtchyan, and WGM Beloslava Krasteva the one ones ranked among the many world top-20.
FIDE World U20 Women Chess Champion, 🇮🇳 Divya Deshmukh, receiving her trophy. @DivyaDeshmukh05 pic.twitter.com/elxbDk9LHx
— Worldwide Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) June 13, 2024
For Divya, the title comes lower than a month after she gained the Sharjah Challengers event. “It’s positively going past my expectations. I’m glad, and I hope that is the inspiration for larger achievements,” she informed ChessBase India.
It’s positively going past my expectations. I’m glad, and I hope that is the inspiration for larger achievements!
—Divya Deshmukh
Her most convincing sport was her fifth-round win:
Divya has now climbed to turn out to be the second highest-rated lady below 20 and quantity 20 on the general Girls’s checklist. She’s going to play for the Indian group within the 2024 Chess Olympiad in Budapest.
