Sayantan Das became India’s 81st Chess Grandmaster as well as the 11th player from West Bengal to bag the honour after he crossed the 2500-mark in live ratings and won the Cannes Open on Sunday with a score of 7.5 out of 9.
The 26-year-old had achieved his final GM norm in 2017 but had to wait 6 years to cross the 2500-mark in order to become a grandmaster.
“Finally I have fulfilled my target. I am happy. I was waiting for too long. The monkey is finally off my back,” Das said as quoted by the Telegraph.
This week I recorded Chess This Week on a Sunday evening, announcing India’s 80th Grandmaster as India’s latest grandmaster.
Before it got edited and I uploaded the video on a Monday morning, we already had India’s 81st Grandmaster😂
— Srinath Narayanan (@srinathchess) February 28, 2023
Das had entered the Cannes tournament with 2476 rating points and finished the event with 2504.
He joins the likes of Dibyendu Barua, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Sandipan Chanda, Neelotpal Das, Deep Sengupta, Saptarshi Chowdhury, Diptayan Ghosh, Saptarshi Roy, Mitrabha Guha, and Koustav Chatterjee who are all GMs hailing from West Bengal.
Das, who is a member of Kolkata’s Alekhine Chess Club, is also a former U-12 World Champion as well as an U-16 Chess Olympiad bronze medal winner.