When Shreyas Royal settles down to practise chess online every day, he notices something curious about his opponents. “Almost everyone I meet created their account after The Queen’s Gambit. They always say, ‘The Queen’s Gambit got me into chess.’ I tell them I’ve been doing it for a bit longer . . .”
Shreyas is 12, too young to have watched the hit Netflix programme about a chess prodigy, starring Anya Taylor-Joy. He’s been playing chess since he was six and not just playing, winning. The day before we speak via Zoom, he’s just got back from a tournament in Budapest. There, his rating rose high enough for him to become a Fide master (Fédération Internationale des Échecs, the chess governing body),