Hyderabad, Feb. 17 -- At an age when most children like to watch cartoons and play with toys, 4-year-old Anish Sarkar prefers to rack his brains to battle against opponents on the chess board. The toddler is amazingly successful at the game and became the world's youngest FIDE-rated player last November when he was 3 years and 10 months old.

The pocket-sized chess prodigy has also been honoured this year with the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar award by the government of India. Anish became interested in chess just after his third birthday. At that time his parents had no idea about where his talents lay.

Just as a pastime his father enrolled him in a special training group at a chess academy led by India's Grandmaster Dibyendu Ba...