Less than six years after taking to chess, Prithu Gupta became the country’s 64th Grandmaster on Thursday night.
The city-lad, aged 15 years, four months and 10 days, met all technical stipulations needed to be a GM following the fourth round of the Portugese League.
Earlier this month, in the Porticcio Open, Prithu made his third and final GM norm to go with the ones made in the 2018 Gibraltar Masters and the 2018 Biel Masters. On Friday, he touched the rating stipulation of 2500 points by beating Germany’s Lev Yankelevich.
Pat from Anand
Reacting to Prithu’s feat, country’s first GM and five-time World champion Viswanathan Anand tweeted: “And we are complete. 64th GM!! Welcome our newest GM Prithu Gupta!”
Prithu responded by tweeting: “Thank you Anand Sir… You have always been the biggest inspiration.”
A milestone
A boy of very few words, Prithu’s initial reaction on reaching the landmark was, “Call it a milestone in my journey. Nothing more. The journey has just begun. I know, I have a long way to go.”
A Class X student of Modern School (Vasant Vihar), Prithu made ripples early last year when he became an International Master before his 14th birthday.
His incredible rise can be gauged from the fact that he gained a whopping 1300 rating points in quick time — from being 1187 in October 2013 to July this year.
Unlike children of his age, Prithu is very selective about the events he participates in. Last year, he played in only six tournaments and collected two GM norms besides taking his rating from 2373 to 2462!
According to his coach, International Master Roktim Bandyopadhyay, “Prithu has a good positional understanding and plays imaginatively. He loves to work hard. Now that the GM title is out of the way, I expect him to play freely and scale greater heights.”
