FIDE Master Sarbartho Mani caused one of the biggest upsets at the ongoing 1st Chola Chess International Grandmasters Tournament in Chennai by bringing down a grandmaster on Saturday. Greece’s Dimitris Alexakis lost in the second round of the tournament to 10-year-old Sarbartho, who shrugged off an Elo rating deficit of 225 points to take down the Greek player. A FIDE master title is two rungs below the grandmaster title in FIDE’s hierarchy of titles.Sarbartho has been making headlines in recent years for his creative play in tournaments, but this was the first time he had brought down a grandmaster in competitive classical chess tournament play.The win over Alexakis was notable for several reasons. By the 15th move, Sarbartho’s position looked bleak and almost unwinnable. But when the Greek grandmaster resigned after 58 moves, not only had Sarbartho changed the trajectory of the game and defied ratings, the young Indian boy held a whopping one hour and 12 minutes on his clock compared to Alexakis, who was down to 36 seconds remaining.Grandmaster RB Ramesh, who is the tournament director of the 1st Chola Chess International Grandmasters Tournament, pointed out how Sarbartho’s early creativity had caught even him by surprise.How Sarbartho Mani’s creativity caught everyone by surprise“What was special in Sarbartho’s game was that after 1.e4 to 1…c5, Sarbartho played bishop e2 (with his second move). That was amazing,” Ramesh chortled in an interview with ChessBase India. “When I saw this, I thought it was some live relay issues on the second move itself. But then I realised after a few moves he actually had played bishop to e2. Such a young kid playing so creatively. Very impressive!”Sarbartho then got into trouble very quickly in the opening. He was trying to create pressure on the king-side, while Alexakis was trying to open the centre. In 15 moves, the evaluation bar showed that the Greek grandmaster held an edge of +2 which translates into an advantage of having two additional pawns on the board compared to your opponent.“After 15 moves, if we see what’s happening, it’s almost like an opening position from a Fischer Random game. All of Sarbartho’s pieces are almost stuck on the first rank while his opponent has made considerable progress,” said Ramesh in his analysis.Story continues below this adBut in the middle game, the tide turned in Sarbartho’s favour, one blunder after another.“Even though the game was not accurate throughout, this is how you learn. You miss some things, you see other things, but you learn in the process,” said Ramesh.Sarbartho started the tournament by defeating Indian international master Shahil Dey, while Alexakis had beaten veteran international master Padmini Rout.The perception of Indian youngsters being stronger than their rating suggests has been proven true at the Chola Chess tournament. The first round on Friday held several scary Halloween tales of Indian youngsters upsetting grandmasters. FIDE master Madhesh Kumar beat GM Mamikon Gharibyan, FIDE master Adhiraj Mitra defeated GM Santiago Yago De Moura while FM Samyak Dharewa defeated IM Ayush Sharma. FM Avirat Chauhan held grandmaster Aronyak Ghosh to a draw as did FM Aadik Theophane Lenin (who drew grandmaster Nikita Afanasiev), FM Aarit Kapil (drew GM Mayank Chakraborty) and FM Vandan Alankar Sawai (who held Ukrainian GM Vitaliy Bernadskiy).Story continues below this adSarbartho Mani’s tryst with chess started at age of one:The Kolkata-based Sarbartho’s tryst with chess started at the age of one, with a chess board that his father, Sidhhartha Mani, bought for him as an unusual gift. The story goes that when Sidhhartha (who is a cardiologist while Sarbartho’s mother is a pediatrician) was young, Viswanathan Anand was his idol. Then last year, his son Sarbartho was in the same team (Team Freedom) as Anand at the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships.“For the initial three years, I played chess with my father and then started beating him,” Mani had once recalled in an interview with ChessBase India.He started playing in the nationals from the age of six. So far, he’s won the national championship titles in the U7 category (in 2023) and U11 category (2026) besides winning the U10 world championship last year.The two titans of Kolkata chess, grandmaster Surya Shekhar Ganguly and grandmaster Dibyendu Barua, have had a role to play in shaping him with coaching, as has RB Ramesh, with the Chola Chess initiative.Story continues below this adSarbartho’s goal for the coming months is to earn an international master norm or two. At the rate he’s going, that should not be too far away.