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The La Plagne Open tournament has brought good news for the Indian chess fraternity. The ongoing tournament in France has resulted in India having another Grandmaster in the game. The moment brought elation to the GM M. Shyam Sunder, as one of the disciples also earned the prestigious title, which he got in the year 2013.
Indian chess player, Harikrishnan A Ra during the tournament was named India’s 87th Grandmaster. He earned his third and final GM-norm at the 5th La Plagne Masters 2025. On the path to his final GM-norm, he scored an unbeaten 7/9, performed at 2610, and drew against Ukraine’s GM Yuri Solodovnichenko, GM Alberto David from Italy and Indian GM Iniyan Pa. Notably, the 23-year-old youngster from Chennai, earned his first GM-norm at 56th Biel International Chess Festival MTO (Master Tournament) 2023 in Switzerland, second GM-norm at Lince Andujar Chess Open 2025 last month in Spain and then the final norm ended in France.
Harikrishnan has been training under the aegis of GM Shyam Sundar for past three years
While congratulating him, Shyam Sundar wrote in a social media post, “India’s latest GM! Congratulations Harikrishnan! We have been working for 3 years and I’m glad that the IM-GM transformation happened successfully.” Harikrishnan, who himself is a FIDE trainer, has been training under GM Shyam Sundar for the last three years. He is another one of the Grandmasters from Tamil Nadu, which is known as the state with maximum number of GMs in India.
Vishwanathan Anand is the first person in India to become chess Grandmaster and one of the few players to achieve an Elo rating above 2800. He was 18-years-old when he won the Shakti Finance International chess tournament, held in Coimbatore. Chess prodigy Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa earned the prestigious title at the age of 12. On the other hand, Koneru Humpy was the first Indian woman to win the Grandmaster title and the eighth ever female Grandmaster.
