Century up: Anuj Shrivatri becomes India's 100th chess Grandmaster
Madhya Pradesh's Anuj Shrivatri won the 7th ASEAN Plus Individual Open in the Philippines to earn a direct GM title – making him India's 100th Grandmaster and his state's first.
Indian chess has reached a number that once seemed like fantasy. Anuj Shrivatri has become India's 100th Grandmaster, and the first ever from Madhya Pradesh, after winning the 7th ASEAN Plus Individual Open Chess Championship in Ozamiz City, the Philippines. The title came with a direct GM award, so the International Master skipped the usual hunt for norms and walked straight into the club.
How he got there
It was not a smooth start. Shrivatri lost his first game of the event, the kind of opening that sends many players into a spiral. Instead he rattled off a run of wins and draws over the remaining rounds to finish on top. For a player who largely trained on his own, that comeback says plenty about temperament – chess at this level is as much about recovering from a bad morning as it is about preparation.
All India Chess Federation president Nitin Narang marked the moment on X and immediately set the next goal: 200 Grandmasters.
From one to a hundred
The scale of this is easy to miss. Viswanathan Anand became India's first Grandmaster in 1988. It took nine years for the country to reach three, with Praveen Thipsay earning the title in 1997. By the end of 2011, India had 25. The 99th, VS Rathnavel, arrived in July 2026, and now the century is up – the bulk of it built in the last decade and a half.
That growth tracks with what fans have seen at the top of the game. A generation raised on Anand's success, online training and academies such as the Westbridge-Anand Chess Academy has pushed Indian players into the world elite, with D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and Divya Deshmukh among the names now known well beyond chess circles.
Why this one matters
Shrivatri's title is a reminder that the pipeline is no longer just Chennai. A first GM from Madhya Pradesh means a first local hero for thousands of kids in clubs and schools across the state – and the proof that a player without expensive coaching can get there. That matters far more for the next hundred than any one tournament result.
The FHM take
Cricket gets the crowds and the headlines, but Indian chess has quietly become one of the country's great sporting success stories. A hundred Grandmasters is not a statistic, it is an ecosystem. And the best part of this particular century? It was scored by a man who lost his first game and refused to blink. That is a lesson worth more than any opening theory.
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