The chessboard that first drew V.S. Rathanvel to the sport came as a free gift when he was six. He began by playing with his mother, a simple start to a journey that has now made the 25-year-old from Coimbatore India’s 99th Grandmaster.
“I started to play with my mother and, from there, they enrolled me in an academy. That’s how it started,” Rathanvel told Sportstar.
Nearly two decades later, Rathanvel crossed the required live Elo rating of 2500 at the third Guwahati Smart City International Open in Assam on Saturday. He had completed the other requirement for the title, three Grandmaster norms, more than four years ago and eventually accumulated five.
With India one short of the century mark, there was an obvious question: had he secretly wanted to be No. 100?
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“No, no. I just wanted to be a Grandmaster. The number didn’t matter,” he said.
Rathanvel began July with a published rating of 2492 and chose an unconventional route to collect the remaining eight points. He entered two consecutive rating tournaments in Guwahati, the eighth Ayodhana International and the Smart City Open, skipping selected rounds and facing lower-rated opponents. Ten successive victories across the two competitions brought him exactly eight rating points and, finally, the title.
The finish appeared clinical. The years preceding it were anything but.
Rathanvel earned his first norm at the First Saturday GM tournament in Budapest from September 4 to 14, 2021, scoring an unbeaten 7/9. The second followed immediately at the Vezerkepzo GM Mix in the same city from September 15 to 23, where he again made 7/9 without losing.
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His third arrived at another First Saturday event in March 2022. He went unbeaten for a third successive norm event, scoring 7.5/9, half a point more than the requirement. At that stage, only the 2500 rating barrier separated him from the title.
“The very next event, I should probably have become a GM after the third norm, but things didn’t go the way I wanted,” he said. “Suddenly, becoming a GM felt like a big task.”
Rathanvel repeatedly climbed to 2496 or 2497, only to slide back towards 2460 or 2470. He said the obstacle was psychological rather than technical.
“The closer you get, the pressure adds on. I wasn’t able to cope with it,” he said. “I was probably four or five times very close to 2500 and didn’t cross it.”
The irony was that he continued producing results of unmistakable GM strength. At the Abu Dhabi International Masters in August 2023, he secured a fourth norm with 5.5/9 against opponents with an average rating of 2577. He defeated Spanish GM Jaime Santos Latasa and drew with Javokhir Sindarov, Vladislav Artemiev, Aryan Chopra and Pranav V.
His fifth norm came in the French Top 16 team competition in May and June 2025. Rathanvel scored 5.5 points from 10 games against a field averaging 2582, beating David Navara and Bassem Amin while drawing with Volodar Murzin, Maxime Lagarde and David Anton Guijarro.
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Multiple coaches helped him negotiate the long final phase. Rathanvel has worked closely with GM Vishnu Prasanna and also had sessions with GMs Srinath Narayanan, Sundararajan Kidambi and Shyam Sundar.
“They were trying to help me overcome this phase where I was getting very close to 2500 but somehow not breaking it,” he said. Although some of those sessions were infrequent, he described each coach as instrumental in the journey.
Rathanvel’s first teachers were Krishnamurthy and Dhansekar in Coimbatore. At home, his father C. Sivakumar and mother Senthil Vadivu V.S. ran a wedding-card shop and printing press.
His promise had surfaced early. Rathanvel won the under-10 bronze medal at the 2011 World Youth Championship in Rio de Janeiro, became an International Master in 2020 and recorded a career-best classical victory over Vietnamese star Le Quang Liem, then rated 2727, at the 2018 Abu Dhabi Masters.
Published on Jul 18, 2026
