Pranav Sairam, a 9-year-old student at Country Lane Elementary School in the Moreland School District, is one of the top 50 chess players his age in the nation.

Pranav was crowned champion in his grade level at the CalChess Grade Level Championship on Dec. 3. He competed against 40 other regional finalists at the Alameda County Fairgrounds.

He will soon compete in the North American Open held in Las Vegas. If he wins there, Pranav could secure himself a spot in the World Youth Chess Championship next year in Brazil, a feat that would test his two years of competitive training.

Pranav needs to increase his rating from 1,632 to 1,900 in order to qualify for that tournament. If he does not increase his player rating in Las Vegas, he still has until Jan. 31 to move up and gain a seat to the international tournament.

Pranav began playing chess through an after-school program at a school he attended before Country Lane.

“It just kept challenging me,” Pranav says of the game.

His mother, Sangeetha Sampath, says a Christmas gift ignited his love for the hobby.

“Three years ago, he wrote to Santa that he wanted a chessboard. I think that’s where it all started,” Sampath says.

Sampath said his first coach noticed Pranav had excellent chess skills and suggested the family train him and enroll him in competitive classes.

Pranav now owns five chessboards. He uses them to practice when he’s not playing chess on the Internet or on a tablet computer. He said he practices at least 11 hours a week. Even when he is traveling with his family, he always takes a chessboard and a clock along for the trip to get in an occasional game.

Pranav has played against chess players of all ages; the youngest competitor he faced was a kindergartner. While Pranav does play against children, he also sits across the board from adults with a rating equal to or greater than his.

“A lot of people are scared to play me,” Pranav says, adding he’s begun to memorize how some frequent competitors play to gain an advantage in future matches.

But the road to becoming a competitive chess player has not been easy, even in just a few short years of immense success. His first competitive tournament was in April 2014, and he remembers inadvertently helping out an opponent.

“I actually made a lot of mistakes,” Pranav says, “not in the playing part but in the rules. I accidentally told somebody a great move they could do.”

When he’s not playing chess competitively, Pranav socializes with his friends and his 7-year-old sister,who is learning to play chess competitively.

He also enjoys playing basketball and checkers in his free time and, like many fourth-graders, says he loves building with Legos.