Vaibhav Suriis India’s latest GM

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Vaibhav Suri is like a whiff of fresh air to Indian chess. The 10th standard student of Modern School, Barakhamba Road, joined the grandmaster club in the country by winning the 3rd Luc Open at salle Debeyre in Lille, France, on Sunday.

He is now India’s 27th GM and fourth from Delhi after Sriram Jha, Abhijeet Gupta and Parimarjan Negi.

The 15-year-old Indian pocketed his third GM norm and 30 rating points along with the title in the French city.

His first two norms had come from international open tournaments held at Bhubaneswar and Visakhapatnam in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

“He is currently the youngest GM in India,” said Fide vice president D.V. Sundar. “It is wonderful news for our country. His progress has been rapid and consistent.

He became an international master in 2010 and has pocketed the GM title within two years,” he added.

Having started playing the game as family pastime, Vaibhav inspired by his elder sister Nupur took it up seriously at the age of nine.

“The kids used to play at home and the chess sessions were important part of our family get togethers.

But slowly Vaibhav got hooked to the 64 squares,” said his father Nitin Suri, who is a general manager in a garment export company.

In his very first national U-9 chess championship, Vaibhav won a silver medal and there was no looking back. “He played a few school tournaments and competed directly at the national U-9 event,” added his father.

While G. B. Joshi and Prasenjit Dutta were Vaibhav’s coaches at the early stages, he is currently learning from Ukrainian GM Alexander Goloschapov.

At the Luc Open, Vaibhav defeated higher-rated GMs Maxim Turov, Oleg Korneev, Sebastien Maze and Marius Manolache and scored 7.5 points out of the total nine.

An ardent admirer of Viswanathan Anand, Vaibhav was controlled in his emotions when he called up his father to break the happy news on Sunday.

“I am waiting to meet him at the airport on Tuesday. We will surely celebrate his success,” Nitin Suri added.

Now at a crossroads in life, Vaibhav’s father said, he would leave the decision making to his son. “We have told him the positives and negatives in pursuing chess.

Having entered class 10, he might be required to spend more time on studies. But then if he wants to concentrate mainly on chess, then it will be his call and we will not push him,” he added.

“Youngsters are able to develop faster as more rated tournaments providing norms are being held in India these days,” said Sundar adding that current GM aspirants are not forced to go abroad in search of norms.

When Viswanathan Anand became the country’s first GM in 1988, not many believed that India would produce so many grandmasters in just over two decades.

(Viswanathan Anand will be playing Israeli GM Boris Gelfand at Moscow from May 11 for his fifth world title).