99th GM India! Sleepless nights, depressed times and then Chess Grandmaster: The making of Rathanvel VS

99th Indian Chess Grandmaster Rathanvel VS (Proposed by TimesofIndia.com) NEW DELHI: Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, felt as if the wait was almost over. Almost ten years after the end of the Ten Year Trojan War, he and his crew were finally within reach of home, but found themselves on the verge of losing all hope of ever returning. “All my comrades have been slain, and I alone remain,” says an exhausted Odysseus at one point in Homer’s ancient Greek epic The Odyssey. But even in his darkest moments of despair and doubt, he never abandons his desire to see Ithaca again.Rathanvel VS, like Odysseus, felt like he was within touching distance of his destiny, in this case the elusive title of Grandmaster (GM), only to see it slip away time and time again. “I could probably have become a grandmaster four years ago,” he told TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive interview. He didn’t have to wait for standards. He collected them with ease. What he had been waiting for for four and a half years was the number: 2500. The Elo rating that turns the Grandmaster standard into an actual Grandmaster.He finally surpassed her on Saturday in Assam.“You know that feeling when you know you deserve it but somehow you still don’t get it,” added an elated and perhaps relieved Rathanvel from Guwahati on his first ever visit to India’s northeast.Now he doesn’t have to wonder. Rathanvel VS is the 99th Grandmaster of India.

A chessboard that was free

There was no great chess lineage in the Rathanvel household in Coimbatore. “I got Horlicks or Complan, I can’t remember which, when I was six or seven,” he said. “And they put a free chess board with it, so I kind of started pestering my mother to play with me.What started as a child nagging his mother for a free board eventually turned into enrolling in a nearby academy under two local coaches, Krishnamoorthy and Dhansekar, names to whom Rathanvel still owes genuine gratitude.“To this day, I’m very grateful to them,” he said.The subsequent rise was not straightforward. By 2019, he had passed the 2,400 mark and had four IM standards at the Abu Dhabi Masters. In September 2021, he had his first GM norm at the First Saturday tournament in Hungary, and remarkably, the second came in the same month, at Vezerkepzo GM-MIX. A third followed in 2022.On paper, Rathanvel has done everything a player needs to become a grandmaster. He just didn’t have enough ratings for that.

Stuck on the edge

What followed was less a plateau than a loop. “Whenever I’m like 2496, 2497, I’ll be one win away and all of a sudden there’s too much pressure or something and I kind of pass out winning games,” Rathanvel revealed.“Once a slip happens, it just keeps going. I’ll bleed like fifteen, twenty points at a time, and then I’ll fix it, come back. It’s been a pattern.”“It was very depressing at times. I was losing sleep and many things related to it.”Injuries and circumstances made the wait difficult. He broke his arm twice. COVID halted international travel just as it was gaining momentum.College, Mechanical Engineering at Hindustan College, Coimbatore, caught the eye during stretches that the 2001-born would otherwise have spent chasing rankings.During his pursuit of the 2500 rating mark, the lowest point came in 2025, playing against David Paravyan in Abu Dhabi.“I knew I was winning. But I kind of started hitting things and I knew things were getting out of hand,” he said. “That was actually very heartbreaking. At one point I also felt that maybe I should take a bigger break and then try something else.”He doesn’t. Instead, on July 1 this year, sitting at 2492, he traveled to Assam for two rating tournaments.He planned to enter rounds against lower ranked opposition, players below 1600, and simply did not lose. Ten wins in a row. Eight Elo points. The number he had been chasing for four and a half years had finally fallen into place.

Lucky, but not that lucky…

“Any chess player, if he is from a very rich background, will not have any financial problems. But in general, people who are not from this kind of background usually have problems,” he told the website.“I was very lucky in this case. I was offered sponsorship from the MPL, the Mobile Premier League. They supported me from 2019 to 2025.”In an MPL-organized event called Chess Mahayudh, Rathanvel played for twelve hours continuously, from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM, against a stream of opponents, defeating a grandmaster and drawing five others, finishing with 256 wins from 265 games and the tournament’s top prize of Rs 5 crore. However, this support did not survive. The Indian government’s ban on real-money gaming platforms last year hit MPL squarely, ending the funding that saw Rathanvel through some of his toughest years.Behind that financial lifeline is also a family running their own small business. His father Sivakumar and mother Senthil Vadivu run a wedding card printing business in Coimbatore. His younger brother Rohith is a lawyer.In terms of chess, Rathanvel’s coaching circle later expanded far beyond his first academy, with prestigious mentors such as GM Vishnu Prasanna, GM Srinath Narayanan, GM Sundararajan Kidambi and GM Shyam Sundar working with him since then.

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What comes after waiting

Sitting in Assam just after the title was confirmed, Rathanvel described the feeling as less elation than escape. “It’s actually kind of a fulfilling feeling because it’s been dragging on for the last four and a half years,” he said.“Deep down I’m happy, but I’m actually at a loss for words to explain how I feel.When asked what drove him to do so, he did not point to ambition or location.“Seeing how my parents hoped I would cross that line was the only thing that kept me going,” he said. “It also gives you a sense of fulfillment and closure. That was something that was missing, but luckily I was able to close it today.”He is realistic about what GM changes the title and what doesn’t. He knows that top invitational events are still out of reach.“I’m not sure if I’ll get it because once you enter 2650 or something higher, you’ll be selected for these events,” he said. “But in general, when you become a grandmaster, the organizers easily target you and you get accommodation and other things, which reduces your financial burden.READ ALSO: India has 98th CEO! Both Parents Chess Coaches 10th Board Exam Forced Break: By Aswath S He already teaches chess online as a freelance teacher, and his own academy, he says, is in the works.“I can’t say I’ll be out of chess,” he said when asked if the sport was a career or something more transitional. “My life may revolve around chess.