Vaishali R becomes the latest Woman Grandmaster from India
Vaishali R from Chennai has become the latest Woman Grandmaster (WGM) from India. The sister of the world's second-youngest Grandmaster R Praggnanandhaa, Vaishali secured her third and final WGM norm at the Riga Technical University Open in Latvia where she bagged five points from her nine rounds.
17-year-old Vaishali is India's highest-ranked woman chess player under the age of 18 and 17th overall in her age category. Her current rating is 2,324 and she was always expected to progress fast after the promising talent had become a Woman International Master (WIM) in 2016.Â
Now Vaishali has become the latest Woman Grandmaster from India when she secured her third and final WGM norm at the Riga Technical University Open, which was held in Latvia. The sister of the world's second-youngest Grandmaster R
In 2017, Vaishali R had won the Asia Blitz Chess Championships in Chengdu, China, where she clinched the gold medal with eight points from nine games, ahead of Iran’s
Her under-12 world title in Maribor in 2012 and the under-14 title at Porto Carras, Greece, in 2015 puts her in an exclusive list of Indians to have won more than one age-group world chess title. The only other Indians to do this are Koneru Humpy, Harika Dronavalli, M Mahalakshmi, Murali Karthikeyan, Divya Deshmukh and Vaishali’s brother R Praggnanandha.
R Praggnanandhaa became the second youngest Grandmaster of all time in June 2018. Praggnanandhaa and Vaishali both train together at the Chess Gurukul Academy in Chennai under Grandmaster RB Ramesh.
