India is 1.6 Elo points away from its 99th grandmaster

Indian chess recently was blessed with 3 GMs in a period of 12 days. The 96th one being Ethan Vaz, 97th being Harshvardhan GB and 98th being Aswath S. Will now India get its 99th GM?

Rathanvel is an incredibly strong player from Tamil Nadu and had already achieved his third and final GM norm back in 2022. He then went on to score 2 more norms and has 5 GM norms under his belt. Since then he has been struggling to reach the Elo of 2500.

As on 1st of July 2026, Rathanvel's FIDE rating is 2492. For the 8 Elo points he decided to take the unconventional path. He played in two rating tournaments in India - 8th Ayodhya FIDE rating chess tournament in Guwahati, Assam and 3rd Guwahati smart city international rating tournament. Now playing in this tournament in itself is a bold decision, because many young Indian talents are under-rated. However, Rathanvel decided to do something which reminds us of Nakamura's path to reaching the FIDE Candidates 2026. The 2001 born IM skipped rounds so that he played against opponents rated below 1600. For every win, he would get 0.8 Elo points. This means that he needs to win only 10 games in all to get a total of 8 Elo points and reach his GM title.

Rathanvel will play the 7th round and most likely win it against his 1451 rated opponent and then skip the 8th round and play the 9th one to get another 0.8 Elo points. With this he would become India's 99th GM.

What are your thoughts about Rathanvel's approach towards his GM title? Let us know in the comments section below.