India, May 3 -- Eight-year-old Tamizh Amudhan, seated on the floor of his house in Thiruthangal - a suburb of Sivakasi, India's firecracker capital - with a laptop perched on a pillow in his lap, his slight frame and the room lit by his mother's phone torch and a flickering candle. His father, Sathish Arumugam, clicked the picture on his phone, imagining it might be useful years from now. The striking image would come to capture a glimpse of the eight-year-old's explosive promise.

Battling a power cut and a dying laptop, Tamizh went on to take down world No.7 Vincent Keymer in an online blitz game at the Freestyle Friday tournament. For context, the German grandmaster won the Weisenhauss Freestyle Chess Grand Slam defeating Magnus Carlse...