Written by Amit KamathDecember 27, 2025 12:25 AM IST 4 min readGoutham Krishna H contemplates his next move at the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Doha on Friday. (PHOTO: Lennart Ootes)On a day when all of India’s golden generation of chess stars were in action on day 1 of the World Rapid and Blitz, it was an International Master from Kerala’s Trivandrum, Goutham Krishna H, who made heads turn with some big conquests in Doha. Aged just 15, Goutham is ranked 80th among Indians—not to mention 1204th in the world—in the FIDE list with a rating of 2433 (and rapid rating of 2392), but that didn’t prevent him from defeating strong grandmasters like Aleksandar Indjic, Aravindh Chithambaram VR and Teimour Radjabov and holding stars like Alexander Grischuk and Anish Giri to draws.At the end of the first day in Doha, Goutham was just half a point behind the five-player tournament leaders’ pack which includes five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen, current world champion Gukesh D and Arjun Erigaisi.Goutham made heads turn on day 1 of the Rapid and Blitz in Doha with some of his unconventional moves: like playing 1.b3 with white (the Nimzowitsch-Larsen Attack) against Azerbaijan’s Teimour Radjabov before eliciting a resignation in 33 moves or playing a rare 1…b6 with black (Owen Defence) against Grischuk before holding the former three-time World Blitz Champion to a draw.Those two opening moves typified the kind of player Goutham is, say both his current coach Srinath Narayanan and his first coach and current mentor Sreejith GS.“He was never someone who was trying to learn things from conventional books or something. He always wanted to play and learn from his mistakes. He always goes through the games of top-level players to study how well they play, their strategies and tries to gauge the thought process behind games. These days, he is working more on unorthodox opening lines,” Sreejith told The Indian Express. (LEFT) Goutham Krishna H contemplates his next move at the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Doha on Friday; (RIGHT) Goutham with his mentor Sreejith GS at the Masters Chess Academy in Trivandrum. (PHOTOs: Lennart Ootes, Sreejith GS)Srinath started working with him just after he stopped training Arjun Erigaisi exclusively a couple of years back.“When I started training Goutham, I noticed that he was very sharp and very fast. That was one of his biggest strengths. He was around 2200 or 2250 at that time. Definitely underrated. He was quite raw in terms of someone who was very talented but hadn’t had a lot of formal training. His play was largely natural. Not a lot of openings work or formal knowledge. Not a lot of theoretical positions that he was familiar with. But he had that sense and intuition,” Srinath told The Indian Express.Goutham made heads turn on day 1 of the Rapid and Blitz in Doha with some of his unconventional moves: like playing 1.b3 with white (the Nimzowitsch-Larsen Attack) against Azerbaijan’s Teimour Radjabov before eliciting a resignation in 33 moves or playing a rare 1…b6 with black (Owen Defence) against Grischuk before holding the former three-time World Blitz Champion to a draw.Srinath points out how while Goutham’s classical play requires improvement, his strengths like intuition are best suited for rapid play.Story continues below this ad“His strengths work really well in the shorter formats. In classical, calculation is more relevant. You have to calculate and go deeper into the position. Whereas in rapid, you just don’t have as much time to calculate. You have to be good at making fast, on-the-go decisions,” Srinath added.Unlike other top Indian players, Goutham still has to balance chess with academics. Right after he returns from Doha, he will have to appear for the Kerala Pre-Model exam (prelim exam before the CBSE Boards).Goutham’s mentor Sreejith laments that he has spent many years now trying to get sponsorship for the boy. Multiple presentations to private and governmental sponsors have yielded little. Nothing has worked out yet, with Goutham’s father Hari, who works as an architect with the public works department in Kerala, and his mother Simitha, bearing all the costs of his career themselves.But after the World Rapid and Blitz exploits, Sreejith believes that could change as the world sees the promise that the 15-year-old Trivandrum boy, with a penchant for some razzle dazzle in the openings, holds within him.Amit Kamath is Assistant Editor at The Indian Express and is based in Mumbai. He primarily writes on chess and Olympic sports, and co-hosts the Game Time podcast, a weekly offering from Express Sports. He also writes a weekly chess column, On The Moves. ... Read More © IE Online Media Services Pvt LtdTags:chesschess news