Anuj Shrivatri stumbled in round one. He did not blink again.
The 22-year-old International Master from Madhya Pradesh tore through the field at the Asenso Global Youth Leadership and Sports Complex in Misamis Occidental, stacking win after win to tally seven points out of eight. On Sunday, Shrivatri seized the 7th ASEAN Plus Individual Open Chess Championship title—and with it, crossed the threshold into immortality as India’s 100th chess Grandmaster.
Its weight across Indian sport is immense. Thirty-eight years after Viswanathan Anand secured his third norm in 1987 and donned the mantle as India’s maiden Grandmaster in 1988, the country has reached triple digits. It took Kolkata’s Dibyendu Barua until 1991 to become the second, and Mumbai's Praveen Thipsay another six years to register the third in 1997. Back then, a single GM norm felt like scaling Everest without oxygen. Today, Indian chess operates at torrential velocity.
The final sprint to the century mark was dizzying. Between July and November 2026, India produced five Grandmasters in under five months. Ethan Vaz, Harshvardhan GB, S Ashwath, and V Rathnavel each broke through the ceiling in rapid succession, setting up Shrivatri to land the historic hundredth punch.
Shrivatri’s campaign in the Philippines demanded cold nerve. Dropping an opening classical game in a short Swiss format usually eviscerates title hopes. Instead, the young master recalibrated his board strategy, tightened his opening lines, and swept through the remaining seven rounds unbeaten. His aggressive tactical conversions dismantled the top seeds and secured the championship outright.
India’s chess ecosystem—anchored by global superstars like Gukesh Dommaraju, R Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Nihal Sarin, and Vidit Gujrathi—now stands as the undisputed production powerhouse of modern international chess. What began as Anand’s solitary revolution in Chennai has turned into a pan-Indian assembly line of prodigies across state borders.
With the century barrier shattered, Shrivatri now turns his sights to the international open circuit to push his Elo rating deeper into elite territory.