Chennai. Indian chess player R Vaishali became the third woman player from the country to achieve the Grandmaster title at the El Llobregat Open in Spain. With this, she along with her brother R Praggnananda became the world's first brother-sister Grandmaster pair. Vaishali achieved this feat after crossing 2500 ELO rating points on Friday. She is the 84th Grandmaster (GM) of the country. Koneru Humpy and D Harika are two other female Grandmaster players from India. 22-year-old Vaishali from Chennai crossed the 2500 ELO rating mark in Spain as she defeated Turkey's Taimar Tarik Selbes in the second round.
Vaishali had achieved the third GM norm at the Qatar Masters tournament in October and needed to increase her ELO rating. In this way, Praggnananda and Vaishali also became the first brother-sister pair to make it to the qualifying tournament candidates for the World Championship match. The Candidates Tournament will be played in Toronto in April. Vaishali's younger brother Praggnananda had won the GM title in 2018 when he was just 12 years old.
Humpy is the youngest female player in the world to achieve the GM title. She became GM in 2002 at the age of 15. Congratulating Vaishali on social networking platform 'X', chess great Vishwanathan Anand said, "She has worked hard in the last few months and this is a good sign as she is preparing for the Candidates Tournament." Congratulations to his parents. , Vaishali's father Rameshbabu is a chess player himself who encouraged his children to take up this game.
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