Why India’s 99th Grandmaster Had to Do It Twice: India’s Latest Chess Mystery, VS Rathanvel

VS Rathanvel, 99th Grandmaster of India NEW DELHI: Last July, congratulations arrived all at once. News and chess sites across India carried the same news that VS Rathanvel, a 25-year-old from Coimbatore, had crossed the 2500 mark at the Guwahati Smart City International Open to become the country’s 99th Grandmaster (GM). It looked like his four-year wait had just ended.Rathanvel completed his norms by 2022. What he lacked was a standard FIDE rating of 2500. During this period, he was stuck in the high 2490s, reaching the 2500 mark “probably 3-4 times” by his own count.“You know that feeling where you know you’re worthy but somehow you just keep falling short,” Rathanvel told TimesofIndia.com after he, along with many others, believed there would be a moment when he would finally secure the title of GM.Then the August rating list came out and surprisingly his rating didn’t improve. With his rating still below 2500, Rathanvel was still not a grandmaster.

What went wrong?

In the month of July, Rathanvel, then rated 2492, left for Assam, needing eight points in the FIDE Standard Rating to meet the criteria to become a Grandmaster.He played two opening matches in Assam, Ayodhana International (six matches) and Guwahati Smart City Open (five), seeded first and second respectively.Still, he didn’t play all the games there. In some rounds, he was tied for zero points, which kept his score low, and the Swiss pairs fed him with lower-ranked opponents.He won all 11 games, with ten of his opponents rated between 1451 and 1625 and one unrated.Each win against ranked players was only worth +0.8, as FIDE limits the rating gap to 400 points, and ten of them added up exactly the eight points he needed to go from 2492 to 2500.He missed four rounds in the Ayodhana International. And in the Guwahati Smart City Open, he chose not to play five games. It was perhaps a smart move by Rathanvel.

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Share an opinionHis performance ratings in two tournaments, 2225 and 2299, were below his own ranking, as he finished 77th and 246th in those tournaments. But a top finish was never on the agenda as he needed just eight points to qualify for the GM title.He achieved that and it felt like India got its 99th CEO.

The strange part and FIDE’s attitude towards titles

Both tournaments were rated. Altogether, the rankings of more than 400 participants at Ayodhana and Guwahati Open have been updated. However, Rathanvel’s rating remained the same.Unlike the Tamil Nadu player, his opponents were in the updated ranking list but each had one less match than they actually played against the ranked opponents, the missing game being the one against Rathanvel.So it can be concluded that all the games played in these tournaments were counted, except those involving Rathanvel.“I have no idea (why this happened),” Rathanvel told TimesofIndia.com during an exclusive interaction. “FIDE and the Indian Chess Federation (AICF) may have even had some discussion. I am not sure what happened. I have also not been able to get satisfactory answers.”The current rules are governed by the FIDE Title Rules effective from 1 January 2024, published in the FIDE Handbook under the International Qualification Commission Rules for Titles, in the section on Normative Titles (Article 1.4).Article 1.4.2 states what FIDE refuses to count towards a title. Games against opponents that do not belong to FIDE federations do not count (players with “FID” federation are accepted but not considered as foreign players). Games against unrated players who score zero against rated opponents in rounds do not count. Neither do games decided by forfeit, judgment or any other means than playing across the board, although other games once started count.An entire tournament can also be disqualified if “changes are made that benefit one or more players”, such as changing the number of rounds or order of rounds, or “providing specific opponents not otherwise participating in the event”.The permitted formats in the title tournaments are Swiss, round robin, double round robin and knockout, and any other format requires the prior approval of the Chairman of the Qualification Committee. The Qualifications Committee is described as the “final assessment unit” for the titles, so it decides whether a result falls under one of them.

Notification weight

There were reports that he was India’s 99th CEO, while FIDE did not actually approve it. “People have already announced that I am the 99th CEO,” he added. “All the media channels covered it.There was no neat way to handle this.“When people say you’ve achieved something and suddenly they also say it’s not yours,” he recalled. “The pressure was obviously there, probably a lot more given the circumstances.Even though he knew he had to chase the 2500 rating again, the situation didn’t help his game either.“Obviously the strength was there, but my mindset wasn’t in perfect shape. There was a lot of pressure and other things going on around it, it was very difficult to focus,” he admitted.What helped was a mentor whose name he chose not to share.“Fortunately, I managed to find a very nice mentor and he somehow managed to put me on the right path. Asked to name him, Rathanvel laughed, “I’d like to keep him a secret for a while.”

I’m doing it again

The only way to make things right was on the council, all over again. He played the 22nd Chefchaouen International Open in Morocco in October and won the title there, finishing 7/9 unbeaten with five wins and four draws.He beat grandmasters like Deep Sengupta and David Larino Nieto along the way.The seventh round against Larin Nieto counted.“I knew if I won against Larin in round 7 I would be very close to 2500, probably 2499.7 or something like that,” he added. “And they consider 2499.7 to be 2500. So I managed to win it and I ended up breaking it.The FIDE Qualification Commission confirmed in 2025 that rating-based titles could be awarded based on a live rating, but it was not clear that a live 2499.7 would round up the way a published number would.Rathanvel’s tournament ended with two draws and his live rating remained at 2497.7.So he played on. Last week at the Memorial Dr. In Debrecen, Hungary, Kantor Sandor defeated WFM Sara Mario Sune and GM Attila Czebe in the first two rounds. This added 3.4 points and raised his live rating to 2501.1, a number without the rounding argument attached.His standards stood for years. The ratings were finally over the line and Rathanvel was once again India’s 99th CEO.Asked how it felt, Rathanvel sighed, “It went well in the end and I’d say I’m a bit more relieved than celebrating.”Rathanvel waited four years for a number, saw it celebrated, watched it disappear, and then had to go out and earn it a second time. Strangely, the only thing that feels balanced is how he feels. He was relieved, not triumphant, and that’s the part no one can take back for now.