Bharath Subramaniyam Becomes India’s 73rd Chess Grandmaster

Bharath Subramaniyam, 14, became India’s 73rd Chess Grandmaster on Sunday, securing GM’s third and final norm at an event in Italy. The Chennai player scored 6.5 points from nine rounds along with four others to finish seventh overall at the event held in Cattolica. He earned his third norm from GM and also reached the required mark of 2500 (Elo). Fellow Indian player M R Lalith Babu emerged the tournament winner with seven points, winning the title based on a better score in the tiebreaker after drawing with three others, including top seed Anton Korobov (Ukraine).

He finished with six wins and a draw and lost two games, against Korobov and Lalith Babu.

Bharath achieved his first GM norm after securing 11th place at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow in February 2020. He obtained the second norm after finishing fourth at the Junior Roundtable Under 21 tournament in Bulgaria with 6.5 points in October 2021.

To become a GM, a player must secure three GM standards and cross the 2500 Elo point live rating.

His coach M Shyam Sundar, himself a GM, congratulated Subramaniyam and tweeted: “Congratulations to Bharath for becoming the last GM in India! Let’s focus on new goals in this new year !!”

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Subramaniyam had become an International Master at the age of 11 years and 8 months in 2019.

Mitrabha Guha became the country’s 72nd GM last November, two days after Sankalp Gupta became the 71st GM.