India’s 99th GM! Sleepless nights, stressful times, and then a chess Grandmaster: The making of Rathanvel VS | Chess News
NEW DELHI: Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, feels like the wait is almost over. Nearly a decade after the end of the ten-year Trojan War, he and his crew have reached their home, having almost given up all hope of returning. “All my companions have been slain, and I alone remain,” an exhausted Odysseus says at one point in Homer’s ancient Greek epic The Odyssey. But, even in his darkest moments of despair and doubt, he never gave up on his wish to see Ithaca again.Rathanvel VS, like Odysseus, felt like he was a long way from his destiny, the elusive title of Grandmaster (GM) in this case, only to see it slip away time and time again. “I could have become a Grandmaster four years ago,” he told TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive interview. He didn’t wait for the rules. He collected those easily. What he waited for four and a half years was the number: 2500. The Elo rating that makes a Grandmaster rule a true Grandmaster.On Saturday, in Assam, he finally crossed it.“You know that feeling where you know you deserve it, but somehow you’re not there yet,” added a happy and perhaps relieved Rathanvel from Guwahati on his first visit to India’s Northeast.Now he didn’t have to wonder. Rathanvel VS is the 99th Grandmaster of India.
A chessboard for free
There is no grand chess lineage in the Rathanvel household in Coimbatore. “I got Horlicks or Complan, I don’t remember which, when I was six or seven,” he said. “And they gave me a chessboard for free, so I started pestering my mother to play with me.”What started as a child spoiling his mother on a free board became, over time, to enroll in a nearby academy under two local coaches, Krishnamoorthy and Dhansekar, the names Rathanvel still truly appreciates.“To this day I am very grateful to them,” he said.The climb that followed was not a straight line. By 2019, he had crossed 2400 and achieved four IM norms at the Abu Dhabi Masters.
By September 2021, at the First Saturday tournament in Hungary, he got his first GM criteria, and, remarkably, his second came in the same month, at Vezerkepzo GM-MIX. The third followed in 2022.On paper, Rathanvel does everything a player needs to become a Grandmaster. He just doesn’t have the ratings to go with it.
Stuck on the edge
What follows is less a plateau than a loop. “Whenever I was like 2496, 2497, I was just one win, and suddenly there was too much pressure or something, and I was a mistake winning games,” Rathanvel revealed.“Once a slide happens, it goes on. I’m bleeding like fifteen, twenty points in one part, and then it heals, comes back. It’s kind of a pattern.“It’s sometimes very depressing. I lose sleep and a lot of things related to it.”The injury and condition made the wait longer. He broke his hand twice. COVID has halted international travel just as it was building momentum.The college, a degree in mechanical engineering at Hindustan College in Coimbatore, focused on the stretch period in 2001 born that could have been spent chasing the rating.During his quest for the 2500-rating mark, the lowest point came in 2025, in a match against David Paravyan in Abu Dhabi.“I knew I was winning. But somehow I started doing things wrong, and I knew things were getting out of control,” he said. “That was actually very depressing. At some point, I also felt that maybe I should take a bigger break and then try something else.”He didn’t. However, on July 1 this year, sitting at 2492, he traveled to Assam for two rating tournaments.He deliberately entered rounds against low grade opposition, players under 1600, and never lost. Ten consecutive wins. Eight points in Elo. The number he had been chasing for four and a half years finally clicked.
Lucky, but not so lucky…
“Every chess player, if they come from very rich backgrounds, doesn’t have any financial issues. But generally, people who don’t come from such backgrounds usually have issues,” he told this website.“In this case, I was very lucky. I was offered a sponsorship by MPL, Mobile Premier League. They support me from 2019 to 2025.”In an event organized by the MPL called Chess Mahayudh, Rathanvel played for twelve hours non-stop, 10 am to 10 pm, against a stream of opponents, defeating a Grandmaster and drawing five others along the way, ending up with 256 wins in 265 games and the tournament’s top prize of Rs 5 lakh.
However, that support did not last. The Indian government’s ban on real-money gaming platforms last year hit MPL directly, and the funding that carried Rathanvel through some of his toughest years ended.Behind the financial lifeline is also a family that runs its own small business. Her father, Sivakumar, and mother, Senthil Vadivu, run a wedding card printing business in Coimbatore. His younger brother Rohith is a lawyer.On the chess side, Rathanvel’s teaching circle later expanded beyond his first academy, with prestigious teachers such as GM Vishnu Prasanna, GM Srinath Narayanan, GM Sundararajan Kidambi, and GM Shyam Sundar all working with him in the years since.
What comes after the wait
Sitting in Assam after the title was confirmed, Rathanvel described the feeling as less joy than escape. “It’s actually like a kind of satisfying feeling, because it’s been going on for the last four and a half years,” he said.“Deep down I’m happy, but honestly I’m at a loss for words to explain how I feel.”Asked what drives him, he doesn’t point to ambition or rank.“When I saw the way my parents expected me to cross that line, that was the only thing that stopped me,” he said. “It also kind of gives you a sense of accomplishment and closure. That’s something that was missing, but luckily I was able to wrap things up now.”He was realistic about what the GM title changed and what it didn’t. The top invitational events, he knew, were still out of reach.“I’m not sure if I’ll get it, because if you come in at 2650 or anything higher than that, you get selected for events,” he said. “But in general, being a kind of Grandmaster makes the organizers easier to target you, and you get accommodation and other things, which kind of lessens your financial burden.”ALSO READ: India gets its 98th GM! Both parents chess coaches, 10th board exam forced to take a break: The making of Aswath S He already teaches chess online as a freelance tutor, and his own academy, he says, is in the works.“I cannot say that I’ll be out of chess,” he said, when asked if the sport is a career or more temporary. “My life probably revolves around chess.”
Post Comment