Aravindh Chithambaram

Some Lesser Known Facts About Aravindh Chithambaram

• Aravindh Chithambaram lost his father to a heart attack when he was merely three years of age.

• At age 7, Aravindh’s grandfather taught him to play chess, though his preferred sport was cricket.

• When he turned 8, one of his relatives encouraged him to participate in a tournament in Madurai. There, he met coach Prasad, who corrected and guided him on the rules of chess. Soon, he started playing in state-level tournaments under the guidance of coach Kamardeen.

• In 2011, he relocated to Chennai to train under Grand Master (GM) R. B. Ramesh (who was awarded the Dronacharya Award by the Government of India in 2023).

• His family faced financial difficulty with the international travel associated with achieving the GM norm (the requirements for the Grandmaster title are three norms and a FIDE rating of 2500 or more). The chess fraternity crowdfunded and raised Rs 9 Lakh for his career requirements.

• In 2013, Coach R. B. Ramesh reportedly told Susan Polgar, an American-Hungarian chess grandmaster, that Aravindh was a prodigy who, given the right chance and financial backing, could rise to the Grand Master title in six months.

  

• He achieved his first GM norm (a high-level performance in a chess tournament) at the Chennai Grandmasters Open in 2013.

• In June 2024, he crossed the 2700 rating (a benchmark for elite chess players) at the French Team Chess Championship where he won against Armenian GM Samvel Ter-Sahakyan.

  

• In 2025, he crossed the Elo rating (a measure of the chess player’s skill created by Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor) of 2726.

• As of February 2025, he has played 1334 games of which he won 661 games (50%) and ended 409 games (31%) in a draw.