Picture Credit: Twitter
Kolkata’s Koustav Chatterjee became India’s 78th Grandmaster in MPL 59th National Senior Chess Championship in New Delhi on Saturday. The 19-year-old claimed the accolade after he drew the game against GM Mitrabha Guha. Koustav was looking like the better player throughout the game. Mitrabha had a chance to go for the win, but Koustav changed up his endgame strategy and managed to pull off a draw to secure his final GM norm.
Koustav won his maiden GM-norm in 2021 October at Sheikh Russel GM 2021 in Bangladesh. Then the teenager took Class 12 board examinations in the first half of 2022. He continued his chess career through these times along with his exams and continued participating in tournaments.
Exactly a year later, Koustav took home his second GM-norm at Asian Continental Championship 2022 in the first week of November. He went past the 2500-mark in August’s FIDE Ratings list. The teenager from Kolkata also becomes the city and West Bengal's tenth Grandmaster. Koustav Chatterjee is a student of Dhanuka Dhunseri Dibyendu Barua Chess Academy.
Along with Koustav Chatterjee, the Grand Master from West Bengal are Dibyendu Barua, Surya Sekhar Ganguly, Sandipan Chanda, Neelotpal Das, Deep Sengupta, Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury, Diptayan Ghosh, Saptarshi Roy and Mitrabha Guha. Going back to the MPL 59th National Senior Chess Championship, GM Abhijeet Gupta and Koustav are leading the tournament with a score of 8/10. After three more rounds the winner of the contest will be announced and will get a spot at the World Cup.
