The 64 grandmasters of Indian chess
On 18th of July Indian chess got its 64th GM. A very symbolic day as the chess board is made up of 64 squares. In 1980s, a genius named Vishy Anand arrived on the chess scene and changed the landscape of Indian chess forever. Anand became a GM in 1987 and 32 years later Prithu Gupta from Delhi became the 64th GM on 18th of July 2019. Who are these grandmasters of Indian chess? In this article we acquaint you with all the GMs of Indian chess along with their photographs and the year in which they became GMs. Also we have collected some important statistics related to the grandmasters in Indian chess, which show us what needs to be done to make Indian chess even better.
Indian chess now has 64 GMs!
Chess in India is booming thanks to many factors. The main one being the presence of Vishy Anand, who is still actively playing chess and has motivated the entire nation by becoming the World Champion for a record five times. At the same time we have a strong national federation, work that is being done at the grassroot level and the chess in schools program that is slowly picking up pace. All of these factors have led to Indian chess going from one GM in 1987 (Vishy Anand) to 64 GMs as on 18th of July 2019. As a chess board has 64 squares, we thought it would be a good time to have a look at all the GMs of Indian chess and the year in which they became grandmasters. But before that, let's have a look at some of the statistics.:
States like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and others which are some of the biggest states in our country are finding it hard to get their first GMs. What might be the reason for that? The main reason is surely the lack of chess culture in these places. Very few tournaments are held and players don't get enough exposure to play and improve. The other reason could also be because of the language. Hindi is the main spoken language in these states and most of the chess literature exists in English. With ChessBase India Hindi we have tried in our own way to bridge this gap, but of course, this issue needs to be tackled in a more intensive manner.
All the nine GMs who are in between the age of 10-19 became grandmasters after 2017. This means that chess in the country is getting younger. In the last couple of years we have had only three players above the age of 30 who became GMs. While, chess is becoming younger by the day, the achievement of Anand to remain in top 10 in the world even at the age of 49 is simply mind boggling.
It is this graph that lets us believe that Indian chess is truly on the right track. Vishy Anand became a GM in 1987. It took four more years for Barua to become one in 1991. In 1997, Pravin Thipsay became India's third GM. India had created three GMs in ten years! From 2000 onwards, chess in India was growing steadily and we have one or two GMs every year except for 2005 when we had none. But that was compensated by India getting four GMs in the next year in 2006. The year 2014 was also very special because it was for the first time that India got six new GMs in a calendar year. However, you could see that this was not a sustainable growth as in the year 2015, the number went down to just one GM. In 2017 India once again got six new GMs, but this was followed not by a slump, but by a rise. In 2018 we had eight GMs and it has only been seven months in 2019 and we already have six GMs. We can say for sure that Indian chess is on the right track and creating six to ten GMs a year has become something that is sustainable. ChessBase India began in January 2016 and since then India has been able to create 23 new GMs. We are glad to be right in the center of this chess revolution.
Meet the 64 G(e)Ms of Indian chess!
Edit in 2020: Two more GMs have been added to Indian chess. They are:
Except for seven photos, all other photos have been taken by Amruta Mokal. Amruta's work in the field of photography has surely given Indian chess a big boost.
The future?
Who are the next players of Indian chess who are close to the GM title?
It is quite possible that all five of these players would achieve their GM titles before 2019 comes to an end and we would have eleven players becoming grandmasters in a calendar year. Now that would really be special!
All Indian GMs with their names, state, age and year of becoming a GM
| Name | State | Age | Year of becoming GM |
| 1. Vishy Anand | Tamil Nadu | 49 | 1987 |
| 2. Dibyendu Barua | West Bengal | 53 | 1991 |
| 3. Pravin Thipsay | Maharashtra | 60 | 1997 |
| 4. Abhijit Kunte | Maharashtra | 42 | 2000 |
| 5. K Sasikiran | Tamil Nadu | 38 | 2000 |
| 6. P Harikrishna | Andhra Pradesh | 33 | 2001 |
| 7. K Humpy | Andhra Pradesh | 32 | 2002 |
| 8. Surya Sekhar Ganguly | West Bengal | 36 | 2003 |
| 9. Sandipan Chanda | West Bengal | 36 | 2003 |
| 10. R B Ramesh | Tamil Nadu | 43 | 2004 |
| 11. Tejas Bakre | Gujarat | 38 | 2004 |
| 12. P Magesh Chandran | Tamil Nadu | 36 | 2006 |
| 13. Deepan Chakravarthy | Tamil Nadu | 32 | 2006 |
| 14. Neelotpal Das | West Bengal | 37 | 2006 |
| 15. Parimarjan Negi | Delhi | 26 | 2006 |
| 16. G N Gopal | Kerala | 30 | 2007 |
| 17. Abhijeet Gupta | Rajasthan | 30 | 2008 |
| 18. S Arun Prasad | Tamil Nadu | 31 | 2008 |
| 19. S Kidambi | Tamil Nadu | 37 | 2009 |
| 20. R R Laxman | Tamil Nadu | 36 | 2009 |
| 21. Sriram Jha | Delhi | 43 | 2010 |
| 22. Deep Sengupta | West Bengal | 31 | 2010 |
| 23. B Adhiban | Tamil Nadu | 27 | 2010 |
| 24. S P Sethuraman | Tamil Nadu | 26 | 2011 |
| 25. Harika D | Andhra Pradesh | 28 | 2011 |
| 26. Lalith Babu M R | Andhra Pradesh | 26 | 2012 |
| 27. Vaibhav Suri | Delhi | 22 | 2012 |
| 28. M R Venkatesh | Tamil Nadu | 34 | 2012 |
| 29. Sahaj Grover | Delhi | 24 | 2012 |
| 30. Vidit Gujrathi | Maharashtra | 25 | 2013 |
| 31. Shyam Sundar M | Tamil Nadu | 27 | 2013 |
| 32. Akhshayraj Kore | Maharashtra | 31 | 2013 |
| 33. Vishnu Prasanna | Tamil Nadu | 30 | 2013 |
| 34. Debashis Das | Odisha | 26 | 2013 |
|
35. Saptarshi
Roy Chowdhury |
West Bengal | 37 | 2013 |
| 36. Ankit Rajpara | Gujarat | 25 | 2014 |
| 37. Aravindh Chithambaram | Tamil Nadu | 20 | 2015 |
| 38. Karthikeyan Murali | Tamil Nadu | 20 | 2015 |
| 39. Ashwin Jayaram | Tamil Nadu | 29 | 2015 |
| 40. Swapnil S Dhopade | Maharashtra | 29 | 2015 |
| 41. S L Narayanan | Kerala | 21 | 2015 |
| 42. Shardul Gagare | Maharashtra | 22 | 2016 |
| 43. Diptayan Ghosh | West Bengal | 21 | 2016 |
| 44. Priyadharshan K | Tamil Nadu | 26 | 2016 |
| 45. Aryan Chopra | Delhi | 18 | 2017 |
| 46. Srinath Narayanan | Tamil Nadu | 25 | 2017 |
| 47. Himanshu Sharma | Haryana | 36 | 2017 |
| 48. Anurag Mhamal | Goa | 24 | 2017 |
| 49. Abhimanyu Puranik | Maharashtra | 19 | 2017 |
| 50. Thejkumar M S | Karnataka | 38 | 2017 |
| 51. Saptarshi Roy | West Bengal | 33 | 2018 |
| 52. R Praggnanandhaa | Tamil Nadu | 14 | 2018 |
| 53. Nihal Sarin | Kerala | 15 | 2018 |
| 54. Erigaisi Arjun | Telangana | 16 | 2018 |
| 55. Karthik Venkataraman | Telangana | 20 | 2018 |
| 56. Harsha Bharathakoti | Telangana | 19 | 2018 |
| 57. P Karthikeyan | Tamil Nadu | 29 | 2018 |
| 58. Stany G A | Karnataka | 26 | 2018 |
| 59. Visakh N R | Tamil Nadu | 20 | 2019 |
| 60. Gukesh D | Tamil Nadu | 13 | 2019 |
| 61. P Iniyan | Tamil Nadu | 17 | 2019 |
| 62. Swayams Mishra | Odisha | 27 | 2019 |
| 63. Girish Koushik | Karnataka | 22 | 2019 |
| 64. Prithu Gupta | Delhi | 15 | 2019 |
State-wise distribution of GMs
| Name of State | No.of GMs |
| Tamil Nadu | 23 |
| West Bengal | 8 |
| Maharashtra | 7 |
| Delhi | 6 |
| Andhra Pradesh | 4 |
| Kerala | 3 |
| Telangana | 3 |
| Karnataka | 3 |
| Odisha | 2 |
| Gujarat | 2 |
| Rajasthan | 1 |
| Haryana | 1 |
| Goa | 1 |
| Total | 64 |
Age and total no. GMs
| Age | No. of GMs |
| 0-9 | 0 |
| 10 to 19 | 9 |
| 20 to 29 | 27 |
| 30 to 39 | 22 |
| 40 to 49 | 4 |
| 50 to 59 | 1 |
| 60 to 69 | 1 |
| Total | 64 |
Year and No. of GMs
| Year | No. of GMs |
| 1987 | 1 |
| 1991 | 1 |
| 1997 | 1 |
| 2000 | 2 |
| 2001 | 1 |
| 2002 | 1 |
| 2003 | 2 |
| 2004 | 2 |
| 2005 | 0 |
| 2006 | 4 |
| 2007 | 1 |
| 2008 | 2 |
| 2009 | 2 |
| 2010 | 3 |
| 2011 | 2 |
| 2012 | 4 |
| 2013 | 6 |
| 2014 | 1 |
| 2015 | 5 |
| 2016 | 3 |
| 2017 | 6 |
| 2018 | 8 |
| 2019 | 6 |
| Total | 64 |
We hope that you enjoyed this compilation related to grandmasters of Indian chess. If you have any feedback, let us know in the comments section below.
