Demis Hassabis was born and grew up in North London. He is of Greek Cypriot and Singaporean descent.[7][8] A child prodigy in chess, Hassabis reached master standard at the age of 13 with an Elo rating of 2300 (at the time the second highest rated player in the world Under-14 after Judit Polgár who had a rating of 2335) and captained many of the England junior chess teams