New Delhi: Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, felt like the wait was almost over. About ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War, he and his crew were finally about to return home, but they almost gave up hope that they would ever return. “All my friends were killed, and I was left alone,” says a weary Odysseus at one point in Homer’s ancient Greek story called the Odyssey. But, even in his darkest moments of despair and doubt, he never gives up his desire to see Ithaca again.Rathanvel VS, like Odysseus, felt like he was so close to where he was going, the name of the Grandmaster (GM) that was not mentioned in this story, only to see it slip away again and again. “I would have become a Grandmaster four years ago,” he told TimesofIndia.com during an interview. He didn’t have to wait for cultures. He gathered them freely. What he waited four and a half years for was the number: 2500. The Elo rating that transforms the status of a Grandmaster into a true Grandmaster.On Saturday, in Assam, he crossed over.“You know that feeling where you know you deserve it, but you’re not there yet,” Rathanvel added with excitement and perhaps relief from Guwahati on his first visit to India’s northeast.Now they don’t have to wonder anymore. Rathanvel VS is the 99th Indian Grandmaster.
The chessboard that came out
There was no great chess line in Rathanvel’s house in Coimbatore. “I have Horlicks or Complan, I don’t remember since I was six or seven years old,” he said. “And they gave away a free chessboard with it, so I started bugging my mom to play with me.”What started as a child torturing his mother on the freeboard turned, after a while, into enrolling in a nearby school with two local coaches, Krishnamoorthy and Dhansekar, the names of which Rathanvel still holds true gratitude.“To this day, I thank them very much,” he said.The rise that followed was not a straight line. By 2019, he had crossed the 2400 mark and claimed four IMs at the Abu Dhabi Masters.
By September 2021, at the First Saturday race in Hungary, he had his first GM practice, and, surprisingly, his second one came the same month, at Vezerkepzo GM-MIX. The third followed in 2022.On paper, Rathanvel did everything a player wanted to be a Grandmaster. He had no boundaries to go with.
He sat on the edge
What followed was less than a loop. “Every time I’m like 2496, 2497, I’ll be winning one, and all of a sudden there’s a lot of pressure or something, and I’m just like I’m going to make a game-winning mistake,” Rathanvel said.“As soon as a slide happens, it just keeps going. I’d bleed like fifty, twenty knots on the stretch, and then I’d fix it, come back. It was like a pattern.“Sometimes it really upset me.Injuries and events added to the wait. He broke his arm twice. COVID shut down international travel as it spread.College, a mechanical engineering degree at Hindustan College in Coimbatore, focused on the time when those born in 2001 might have been able to chase the votes.In his quest for the 2500 mark, his lowest point came in 2025, in a match against David Paravyan in Abu Dhabi.“I knew I was winning. But somehow I just started messing things up, and I knew things were going well,” he said. “That was really heartbreaking. At one point, I thought maybe I should take a break and try something else.”He didn’t. Instead, on July 1 this year, when he was ranked 2492, he went to Assam for two matches.They deliberately went in against inferior opponents, less than 1600 players, and did not lose. Ten straight wins. The eight points of Elo. The number he chased for four and a half years jumped.
Fortunately, but not lucky…
“Any chess player, if he comes from a very rich area, will not have financial problems. But in general, people who are not from this type often have problems,” he told the website.“In this case, I was very lucky. I was supported by the MPL, the Mobile Premier League. They supported me from 2019 to 2025.”In an event organized by MPL called Chess Mahayudh, Rathanvel played twelve hours non-stop, 10am to 10pm, against a host of opponents, beating the Grandmaster and drawing five others along the way, finishing with 256 wins in 265 games and a grand prize of Rs 5 lakh in the tournament.
However, that support did not survive. The Indian government’s ban on virtual reality gaming platforms last year hit MPL directly, and the money that carried Rathanvel through its most difficult years was gone.Behind this financial strategy is a family that runs its own small business. Her father, Sivakumar, and mother, Senthil Vadivu, run a wedding card printing business in Coimbatore. His younger brother, Rohith, is a lawyer.On the chess side, Rathanvel’s coaching team later expanded beyond his initial training, with famous instructors like GM Vishnu Prasanna, GM Srinath Narayanan, GM Sundararajan Kidambi, and GM Shyam Sundar all working with him in the years since.
What comes after waiting
Sitting in Assam soon after the title was confirmed, Rathanvel described the feeling as less excitement than escape. “It’s kind of satisfying, because it’s been going on for the last four and a half years,” he said.“Deep down I’m happy, but really I’m at a loss for words to describe my feelings.”When asked what got him through, he didn’t point to ambitions or rankings.He said: “When I saw how my parents expected me to cross that line, I just thought it was impossible. “It also gives you satisfaction and closure. That was something that was missing, but luckily I managed to get things done today.”He is very specific about what the GM title changes and what it doesn’t. High-level invitational events, he knows, are still a long way off.“I don’t know if I will get it, because as soon as you enter 2650 or anything above that, you will be selected for the event,” he said. “But in general, being a Grandmaster makes it easier for the organizers to focus on you, and you get accommodation and other things, which makes your load less.”ALSO READ: India will get 98th GM! All the parents of chess coaches, 10 board exams forced a break: The creation of Aswath S He is already teaching chess online as a freelance teacher, and his own school, he says, is in the works.“I can’t say I’m going to give up chess,” he said, when asked if the game is a career or a temporary thing. “My life can revolve around chess.”