Anuj Shrivatri became India’s 100th chess Grandmaster on Sunday.
The International Master won an open event in the Philippines.
The event awards the Grandmaster title to its winner.
India’s first Grandmaster, Viswanathan Anand, won the title in 1988.
Shrivatri is the first from the state of Madhya Pradesh.
The ASEAN Plus winner gets the Grandmaster title directly, so the usual requirements of three norms and a 2500 rating did not apply, according to Chess.com and Khel Now.
Shrivatri came into the event with one Grandmaster norm, earned in Budapest last November, according to Chess.com.
Shrivatri is the first Grandmaster from Madhya Pradesh, according to Khel Now and other reports.
The Bridge, Chess.com and Khel Now give Shrivatri’s age as 22, while one other outlet gives it as 20, so the age differs by report.
Viswanathan Anand became India’s first Grandmaster in 1988, nearly four decades earlier, according to the reports.
Anand wrote on X that it was a cracker of a 100, according to Chess.com.
All India Chess Federation president Nitin Narang congratulated Shrivatri on becoming India’s 100th Grandmaster, according to the reports.
The Bridge says India’s last five Grandmasters, from the 96th to the 100th, were added between July 2026 and November 2026.
Chess.com’s count from the November FIDE list shows 97 Indian Grandmasters, with some titles still awaiting formal confirmation, so the number 100 counts titles that FIDE has not yet all listed.
Shrivatri learned chess at seven and was mostly self-taught, and became an International Master at 15, according to Chess.com’s account of earlier interviews.
Chess.com, citing the Indian Express, reports that Shrivatri worked as a software engineer for a German firm before leaving to play chess full time.
In an interview cited by Chess.com, Shrivatri said the aim is to cross a rating of 2600 and to win as many tournaments as possible.
Playing chess in a park (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
