Argentina’s 12-year-old Messi of Chess holds Vidit Gujrathi

For a player dubbed the “Messi of Chess,’ Argentinian Faustino Oro's first foray into the game indeed came through football.

- HT Correspondent

During the Covid-forced lockdown, Oro, then six, would kick a football against the walls at home for hours on end. That is when his father introduced him to chess as a way to get him to stop kicking the ball nonstop.

Oro is now 12. He briefly became the youngest player to become an International Master, he is the youngest to cross the 2500 ELO rating, second youngest to earn a Grandmaster norm, and has beaten Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura in online matches.