R. Vaishali is the latest to rise with a Grandmaster title. Chess in India has come a long way since Viswanathan Anand arrived on the scene during the early eighties. A sport that hardly passed muster for long became a hot topic once this genius began to make wonders on the chess board. As Pravin Thipsay, India’s first Commonwealth Chess champion, was to tell a newspaper sometime back in the seventies, the interest of an Indian player was to gain points more than winning an event. It was only around this time that an international tournament came to India for the first time, and more followed, giving the opportunity for the Indians to interact with foreign players and watch their moves closer and learn. Much has happened since, and the man who galvanised it all was none other than Anand, who himself began his journey when just 6 years old and slowly but surely rose to enviable heights as the seasons passed by. The five-time world champion-tag holder, nothing more need be said of his greatness, but what he has done for Indian chess is just unbelievable.

Anand was the first Grand Master from India, and that came in 1988. A year before, he became the first Asian to be crowned World Junior Champion. We are in 2023, and with the latest success by Vaishali, India now has 84 Grand Masters and lies fifth in the world in terms of the number of GMs in the country! She is only the third woman in........

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