The usual route needs three Grandmaster norms and a rating of 2500.
Some events, such as the ASEAN+ Open, award the title directly to the winner.
Anuj Shrivatri won that event on November 8.
That made Shrivatri India’s 100th Grandmaster.
The first was Viswanathan Anand, in 1988.
After the opening-round loss, Shrivatri was unbeaten with six wins and two draws and won the final two rounds, according to Chess.com.
A final-round win over International Master James Morris of Australia clinched the title, according to Chess.com.
Shrivatri finished half a point ahead of Grandmaster Nguyen Duc Hoa of Vietnam, and Filipino FIDE Master Alekhine Nouri took third place on tiebreak with 6 out of 9, according to Chess.com.
Shrivatri was seeded fourth with a rating of 2450, and Vietnamese International Master Nguyen Quoc Hy was the top seed at 2474, according to Chess.com.
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.
Playing chess in a park (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0