Sacrifices, slumps and success - The rise of S'pore's youngest chess grandmaster

Behind every academic result is a young person quietly chasing their dreams, beating the odds, and hoping to make something of themselves. In More than Grades, a series by The Sunday Times, we tell the stories of youth who are making waves in school and beyond.

- Sherlyn Sim

Mr Siddharth Jagadeesh's chess career began at age six with a question to his father.

"What is so special about that game? You are watching it all the time," he asked his father, Mr Jagadeesh Balakrishnan, who would spend hours watching battles between renowned chess champions Magnus Carlsen and Viswanathan Anand on YouTube.

They soon started playing chess against each other, with the father losing on purpose to encourage the youngster.

But it was not too long before Mr Siddharth won on his own merits, rising through the ranks of youth competitions and beating older players as well as adults in Singapore and internationally.

"By (the time I was) 10 or 11 years old, I knew this was what I wanted to do in life," he said. "Playing chess was so fun. I was drawn not only to chess' competitive edge, but also to its intellectual depth - the calculation, strategy and disciplined thinking it demanded." Around a decade after he picked up chess, Mr Siddharth made history when he became Singapore's youngest chess grandmaster in 2024 at age 17. He and his family had become Singapore citizens the previous year.

Grandmaster is the highest title awarded by the World Chess Federation (FIDE) and the pinnacle of competitive chess. To become a grandmaster, a player must achieve a FIDE rating of at least 2,500 points and secure three high-performance tournament results.

Mr Siddharth, now 18, is Singapore's fifth grandmaster, alongside Wong Meng Kong, Kevin Goh Wei Ming, Tin Jingyao and Wu Shaobin.

He is ranked No. 2 here, after Mr Tin, and No. 623 in the world.

In 2025, he won the Under-18 World Chess Championship and helped Team Singapore clinch bronze medals in the Men's Asean Chess Rapid Team and Men's Rapid Double Chess events at the SEA Games in Thailand.

Uzbek grandmaster and Singapore's national team coach Andrey Kvon said Mr Siddharth is "one of the most promising young players in the world".