Indian Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa defeated world champion Magnus Carlsen in the eighth round of the Airthings Masters competition.
- The Grandmaster (GM) title — awarded by the FIDE-is the highest ranking that a chess player can achieve. The title is valid for life, unless a player is stripped of the title for a proven offence such as cheating.
More about Grandmaster
- In 1950, FIDE started to formally designate the best players as Grandmasters, based on a set of laid-down criteria.
- 27 GM titles were awarded in the first batch in 1950, including to then world champion Mikhail Botvinnik of the erstwhile USSR.
Qualifications for Grandmaster
- The qualifications for GM were changed several times, including in 1957, 1965, and 1970. Currently, FIDE awards chess’s highest honour to a player who is able to achieve a FIDE Classical or Standard rating of 2,500, plus three GM norms.
- A player must have a performance rating of 2,600 or higher in a FIDE tournament that has nine rounds, playing against several opponents from federations or countries other than the one to which the player belongs, and those opponents must be titled themselves.
- FIDE has so far recognised fewer than 2,000 GMs out of the millions who play the game around the world.
Grandmasters in India
- Viswanathan Anand became the first grandmaster from India in 1988, and is one of the few players to have surpassed an Elo rating of 2800, a feat he first achieved in 2006.
- The Indian prodigy Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu became the second youngest grandmaster in chess history at age 12 years, 10 months, and 13 days after getting his third grandmaster norm with a performance of 2,710 at the Gredine open in Ortisei, Italy in 2018.
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