Chittorgarh doesn’t usually make chess headlines. For two days in late July, it did. Rishaan Jain, an eleven-year-old student at Kingdom of Chess in Udaipur, went into the Rajasthan State U-13 (Open) Selection for National Chess Championships 2026 as the top seed and left as the only unbeaten player in a field of 150. Six wins, one draw, 6.5 out of 7.
Nobody else touched that number.
It’s not his first Rajasthan title, either. Rishaan won the U-15 state title in Alwar last October without dropping a game, and finished second at an earlier Rajasthan State Championships appearance before that. What’s different this time is the prize. Win the U-13 state selection, and you don’t just take home a trophy. You take a seat on the Rajasthan squad heading to Nationals.
| Champion | Rishaan Jain (Kingdom of Chess, Udaipur) |
|---|---|
| Event | Rajasthan State U-13 (Open) Selection for National Chess Championships 2026 |
| Organizer | Chittorgarh District Chess Association |
| Venue | Maheshwari Bhawan, Pratap Nagar, Chittorgarh |
| Dates | July 25-26, 2026 |
| Format | 7-round Swiss, rapid time control (30 min + 30 sec increment) |
| Score | 6.5/7, unbeaten: 6 wins, 1 draw |
| Runner-up | Rudra Kavia, Jaipur (6/7) |
| Next stop | National Chess Championship 2026, Puducherry |
How Did Rishaan Jain Win the Rajasthan State U-13 Chess Championship?
He won by not losing. Across seven rounds of rapid chess, Rishaan beat six different opponents and drew with one, a run that ended with the eventual runner-up on the final board.
- Round 1: Beat Himank Chechani
- Round 2: Beat Abhyuday Bhaduka (rated 1425)
- Round 3: Beat Tanush Mandowara (rated 1549)
- Round 4: Beat Japnoor Singh (rated 1577)
- Round 5: Drew with Kavyansh Jain (rated 1769), his only dropped point
- Round 6: Beat Abhiwadan Bhaduka (rated 1658)
- Round 7: Beat Rudra Kavia (rated 1838), who went on to finish second overall
Round 5 is worth pausing on. Kavyansh Jain was rated nearly 1,800, a real jump from the opposition Rishaan had faced through the first four rounds, and Rishaan couldn’t break through. A lot of eleven-year-olds carry a result like that into the next game and unravel a little. He didn’t. Two rounds later, playing black in what amounted to the title match, he beat Rudra Kavia outright.
His performance rating for the event came out to 2024, well above his own 1991 FIDE rating going in. Think of it like a student acing a final exam two grade levels above their own, on the day it actually counted.
Final Standings
| Rank | Player | Club/City | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rishaan Jain | Udaipur | 6.5 |
| 2 | Rudra Kavia | Jaipur | 6 |
| 3 | Rishen Jilowa | Jaipur | 6 |
| 4 | Varnit Dixit | Jaipur | 6 |
| 5 | Veer Kumar | Jaipur | 6 |
Four other players finished on 6 points. What separated Rishaan from a four-way scramble for second wasn’t luck. It came down to tiebreaks built on the strength of the players he’d already beaten.
What Comes Next for Rishaan Jain?
Puducherry. The tournament organizers confirmed that Rishaan, as champion, and Rudra Kavia, as runner-up, will represent Rajasthan at the National Chess Championship 2026. That’s a different tier of competition entirely: the strongest U-13 players from every state in the country, no home crowd, no familiar arbiters.
For a kid who was rated 1649 as recently as late 2024, a live rating near 1991 and a state title less than two years later isn’t a small jump. But numbers on a chart only tell you so much. Where he actually lands at Nationals will say a lot more about how far this curve still has room to run.
The Coaching Behind the Curve
Kingdom of Chess builds its curriculum around exactly this kind of trajectory. The academy tracks each student’s structured FIDE rating strategy against a Pawn-to-King course path, so a jump like Rishaan’s gets read as data, not as a happy accident. Coaches adjust the next training block around what the rating curve is actually saying.
That’s the question parents ask most, honestly: does structured coaching actually translate into results, or is it just extra homework? Rishaan’s last twelve months are a fairly direct answer. Second place at the Rajasthan State Chess Championships, an unbeaten U-15 state title, and now an outright U-13 win that books a Nationals seat. Three events, three age brackets, one trend line pointing the same direction.
If your child is showing the same appetite for tournament chess, Kingdom of Chess runs elite-level coaching for tournament-bound players built around exactly this stage of the curve: small class sizes, monthly progress tracking, and training aimed at the next rated event, not just the next lesson. Full results and pairings from this tournament, along with past KOC student performances, sit on the academy’s tournament archive, updated after every event KOC students compete in.
