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Knowledge Nugget: Chess Grandmasters and India
subject: Sports
Why in the news?
Dommaraju Gukesh became the world’s youngest chess champion at the age of 18. He beat China’s Ding Liren in a three-week battle of wills that tested both players psychologically and physically. He has surpassed Garry Kasparov as the youngest. D. With Gukesh’s victory, India’s chess prowess shines on the global stage. Notably, there are around 85 chess grandmasters in India.
Key takeaways:
1. Grandmaster is the highest title or rank a chess player can achieve. The grandmaster title—and other chess titles—is awarded by the International Chess Federation, FIDE (abbreviation of its French name Fédération Internationale des Échecs), the Lausanne-Switzerland-based governing body of the international game.
2. The title is a badge of the game’s Super Elite, a recognition of the greatest chess talent on the planet, tested and proven against a peer group of other equally talented players in the toughest tournaments in the world.
3. Besides Grandmaster, the Qualifications Commission of FIDE recognizes and awards seven other titles: International Master (IM), FIDE Master (FM), Candidate Master (CM), Woman Grandmaster (WGM), Woman International Master (WIM), Woman FIDE . Master (WFM), and Women Candidate Master (WCM).
4. Grandmaster and other titles are valid for life unless a player is stripped of the title for a proven offense such as cheating.
5. FIDE has so far recognized less than 2,000 grandmasters out of the millions who play the game worldwide. Most Grandmasters have been men. Russia (and the former Soviet Union) have produced The most grandmasters in the worldfollowed by the United States and Germany.
History of the Grandmasters
1. The term grandmaster is almost a century old, and was initially used as a general expression to describe a player who was better than just a master.
2. In the 1950s, FIDE began to formally designate the best players as Grandmasters based on a set of prescribed criteria. The first batch in 1950 awarded 27 Grandmaster titles, including the then world champion Mikhail Botvinnik of the USSR and many other great players of their time, but not competing since. The players were included.
Qualifications for Grandmaster
1. The qualifications for Grandmaster have changed several times, including in 1957, 1965, and 1970. Currently, FIDE awards chess’ highest honor to a player able to achieve a FIDE Classical or Standard rating of 2,500, as well as three Grandmaster standards.
2. Grandmaster standards are defined by a complex and rigid set of rules regarding tournaments, games, and players set forth in the FIDE Title Rules.
3. Every standard is very difficult to achieve. In general, a player must have a performance rating of 2,600 or higher in a FIDE tournament that consists of nine rounds, playing against multiple opponents from the player’s respective associations or other countries, and those opponents must be the title themselves.
Beyond the Nugget: Indian Grandmasters
1. Chess, in its indigenous versions, has long existed in India and finds references in the country’s epics, songs and even films. Chaturanga was played in palaces and streets. But formally Western chess took time to capture the imagination in this country. As a result, perhaps, India’s progress in chess increased more than exponentially.
2. Afterwards Manuel Aaron Became India’s first International Master in 1961, it took another 26 years for the first Grand Master to emerge, Viswanathan Anand. And it wasn’t until the stroke of the century that India got its first world champion, Anand again.
3. India emerged as a chess powerhouse in the 2000s and has 85 grandmasters. In May 2024, Shyam Nikhil from Tamil Nadu became the 85th Grandmaster of India.
4. Women Grandmasters from India: Indian chess player Vaishali Rameshbabu became a grandmaster at the IV El Llobregat Open in December, 2023, surpassing 2,500 FIDE ranking points. She is the third Indian woman player to win the title after Koneru Hampi and Harika Dronavalli.
(Source: Sports Daily: Who is the Chess Grandmaster?, Reminiscences of the Old Generation of Indian Chess Champions, Rise and Fall of Chess, Young Masters)
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