3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Chess: Four Indians in world's top 10 for first the time
Bengaluru: Away from the pitched battle between current and former world champions in the Norwegian city of Stavanger – which has India's D Gukesh sweeping the headlines – another Indian is quietly breaking barriers and raising the roof. For the first time ever, India has four active chess players in the top 10 of the live ratings – Gukesh - world No.4 (Elo 2782.3) Arjun Erigaisi - world No.5 (Elo 2772.6) R Praggnanandhaa - world No.7 (Elo 2765.9) and Aravindh Chithambaram - world No.10 (Elo 2753.5).
The newest entrant to this elite group is 25-year-old Aravindh. The Grandmaster from Madurai breached Elo 2750 for the first time in his career over the last weekend after a dominant 27-move win against Xu Xiangyu in Round 3 of the Stepan Avagyan Memorial in Armenia. Praggnanandhaa is the other Indian in the field and the only other player rated above 2700.
Apart from these four top-ten players, the three other Indian players in the 2700+ bracket are Viswanathan Anand (Elo 2743), Vidit Gujrathi (Elo 2720) and P Harikrishna (Elo 2703). Twenty-year-old Nihal Sarin broke into the Elo 2700 club at the Dubai Open last week, but has since slipped.
For Aravindh, the climb up the rankings, even if belated, has been impressive. He broke into the scene as a 14-year-old who took down a clutch of Grandmasters to win the Chennai GM Open in 2013, held on the sidelines of the World Chess Championship between Anand and Magnus Carlsen. He was touted as the next big thing in Indian chess but inexplicably flew under the radar before returning with noteworthy performances last year. In recent times, he has pulled off a string of upsets – defeating American GM Hikaru Nakamura (2024 World Blitz Championship), Erigaisi (2024 Chennai Grand Masters), Alireza Firouzja (2025 Superbet Poland) and Jan-Krzysztof Duda (2025 Superbet Poland) and won the Prague Masters earlier this year.
'Aravindh should have perhaps reached this level five years ago,' says coach RB Ramesh, 'He had the potential but confidence was an issue. It was holding him back. He now realises that he's getting older and the younger players are getting ahead of him, Typically, in such situations a player can give up and begin to believe that their time is over with younger players taking over. But Aravindh has not given up, he is motivated to push back. There is a sense of urgency now.'
