NAGPUR: On Sunday, city's third International Master (IM) Sankalp Gupta scripted history by becoming India's quickest and 71st chess Grandmaster (GM) in Serbia. V Anand started it all in 1987.
The 18-year-old achieved the GM title in mere 24 days and in three successive tournaments. No other GM from India has earned the title in such a short time. He is now Nagpur's second and Maharashtra's 10th GM.
To achieve the GM title a player is required to achieve three norms and cross the live rating of 2500 Elo points. Off to Serbia on October 12, Sankalp's sojourn started with a round-robin tournament on October 15. In the 11-round event, the International Master (IM) cleared his first GM norm on October 22 and immediately started playing the second tournament where he achieved his second norm.
With a satisfactory show in back-to-back tournaments, the 2446 Elo Sankalp earned 17.3 and 21.8 points respectively to take his tally of live international rating to 2485 on October 30.
Sankalp started playing his third tournament from October 31, but his march was halted in the second round. Sankalp remained positive and snatched three victories on the trot, drew three boards and won the final round to emerge on top of the table with 6.5 points and cleared the third GM norm.
Based on the tie-break system, he finished second but gave a performance rating of 2605 and earned 19.1 Elo points to take his tally of live international rating to 2504.1 and clear the fourth and final criteria of becoming GM.
Sharing his happiness, Sankalp told TOI that he knew becoming a GM in three tournaments is possible. "And actually, doing it feels great. After losing the second round I was very upset. At the same time, I was motivated to bounce back and took just one game at a time," he said.
Since starting his Serbia sojourn on October 15, Sankalp became a GM on Sunday and scripted a rare record of achieving the title in just 24 days. Of the 70 GMs in the country no other Indian master has ever become a title holder in such a short time.
On June 19, 2019, when Sankalp became an IM, he took a total of 895 days since clearing his first norm on January 5, 2017.
Sankalp's coach and Vidarbha's first GM, Swapnil Dhopade, was elated with the achievement. "Sankalp deserved the GM title for a long time. He had the strength. His calculations were already like a GM. During a recent training camp, he was dejected about not having a single GM norm and his rating is way lower than 2500. I told him that it is possible to score GM norms and cross 2500 in 3 back-to-back tournaments," he said.
Explaining how difficult it was for Sankalp to prepare during the pandemic, Dhopade said he had been working quite hard. "It was difficult to maintain the same level of motivation and keep practicing though no tournaments were happening around. But he was determined, and his hard work paid off. We never know how close we are to achieving our dreams so we should never stop trying. Sankalp's story is a great example of this," said Dhopade.
Sankalp is elated to achieve the feat on his father Sandeep Gupta's birthday. He thanked mother Suman, his former and current coaches including Nayandeep Kotangle, Gurpreet Maras, Swayams Mishra, Swapnil Dhopade and all those who guided him in his journey.
