Checkmate By India’s Sixty First Grandmaster: Sixteen-Year-Old P Iniyan Defeats Top Seed To Achieve Feat

On Tuesday (5 March), India’s sixteen-year-old P Iniyan became the country’s sixty first Grandmaster (GM), as reported by Indian Express.

To become a GM, three GM norms have to be received with an ELO rating of at least 2500 points.

Hailing from Erode, Iniyan defeated GM Sergey Fedorchuk of Ukraine in the sixth round winning the ongoing Noisiel Open in France. Previously, having received his three GM norms, he could not get his ELO rating to the required mark thus failing to become GM. He went over the 2500 mark on Tuesday beating the top seed.

“It is nice to have the GM tag next to me. I am happy and quite relieved at this point of time. My coach K Visweswaran has been with me through and thick and I owe a lot of my success to him,” Iniyan was quoted in the report as saying.

His mother, Saranya claimed there was a lot of pressure on him to become a GM and credited the manner in which he dealt with it, not allowing it to affect his preparations.

Former World Chess champion Vishwanathan Anand also congratulated Iniyan from his official Twitter account.

Iniyan’s next ambition is to cross the 2600 mark.