Nine-year-old Indian chess player Anvi Hinge has become the world’s youngest Women’s Candidates Master after a breakthrough performance at an international tournament in Alicante, marking a rapid rise for one of India’s emerging chess talents.

Anvi, who comes from Pimpri-Chinchwad near Pune, entered the tournament with an Elo rating in the early 1600s, nearly 200 points short of the 1800 benchmark required for the Women’s Candidates Master (WCM) title awarded by FIDE.Her father, Deepak Hinge, said he viewed the tournament primarily as another developmental step in her young career rather than a realistic opportunity to secure the title.

Over nine rounds in Spain, however, Anvi delivered what her family described as the strongest performance of her career so far. She scored 6.5 points with six wins and gained 175 Elo rating points, enough to cross the required threshold for the WCM title.The performance saw her finish joint fourth overall, emerge as the highest-ranked Indian player at the event and secure first place in the women’s category.

The result also elevated her to the world number one position in the FIDE Under-9 girls rankings, making her the only WCM title-holder currently competing in that age category.Anvi’s latest achievement adds to a growing list of national and international results accumulated before the age of 10. She previously won the girls’ state championship in the Under-7 category and secured a bronze medal at the national championships in India.

In 2025, she earned silver in the Under-8 category at the FIDE World Cadet & Youth Rapid & Blitz Chess Championships held in Greece and finished runner-up in the same category at the Commonwealth Chess Championship in Malaysia.

Her strongest multi-medal performance came earlier this year at the Western Asian Youth Chess Championships in Tajikistan, where she won two gold and four silver medals as part of India’s 31-medal haul at the tournament.According to her family, Anvi’s introduction to chess came through her older brother Aarush.

Deepak Hinge, a software engineer, taught her the fundamentals before enrolling her at a local chess academy when she was four-and-a-half years old.She initially trained at Tactical Moves Chess Academy in Pune before moving into more structured coaching environments.

Her current coaching team includes Praveen Thipsay and Pune-based FIDE Master Siddhant Gaikwad.Her development has also been supported by Chola Chess Academy, founded by Dronacharya awardee RB Ramesh. The academy provides in-person and virtual coaching for selected young chess talents across India.

Through academy-linked scholarship support, Anvi currently trains multiple times each week under grandmasters including Kidambi Sundararajan, Debashis Das and Thej Kumar MS.Deepak Hinge said a visit to the Global Chess League in Mumbai significantly influenced his daughter’s ambitions.

During the event, Anvi met leading Indian players, including reigning world champion D Gukesh and former world champion Viswanathan Anand.“She got really inspired looking at all these players,” Deepak said, adding that Gukesh’s interactions with younger players left a strong impression on his daughter.

“Since then, she talks about how she also wants to become like them,” he said.Deepak described himself and his wife as facilitators rather than directors of Anvi’s chess journey, stressing that they support her interest in the game without imposing expectations.Alongside chess training, he said the family places emphasis on history and storytelling as part of her upbringing.

Each night, he reads to Anvi from books about historical figures including Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, Bajirao I and Maharani Tarabai.He said the stories are intended not only to teach history but also to help instill resilience and discipline as she navigates the pressures of competitive chess at an early age.

India has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing chess nations in recent years, driven by the success of players such as Gukesh, Anand and a rising generation of young grandmasters. Anvi’s emergence adds to the country’s expanding pipeline of junior talent competing at international level before reaching adolescence.