On a day her 16-year-old son, Mayank, became the first grandmaster from Northeast India, Monomita Chakraborty can’t help but think how much sooner he could have reached there if it hadn’t been for the almost 20 months he lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which he played in no events. Or many of the other challenges that he’s had to surmount. The Guwahati boy’s road to becoming India’s 94th grandmaster has passed through many checkpoints: he’s barely had any sponsors, he’s received coaching from grandmasters only in little spurts, and trying to compete in a tournament in India while living in Guwahati sometimes demands as much travel time as flying to the UAE for a competition.
But all through it, Mayank has chased his dream of becoming a grandmaster. On Saturday, not only did he become a grandmaster, but he also did it by winning the Hotel Stockholm North by First Hotels Young Talents event in Sweden.
“When there was COVID, there was a total halt of chess activities for almost two years for him. He used to play in online tournaments once in a while, but otherwise, there was not much. I used to come back from work to see him at home all udhas,” Monomita, who quit her job as a gynaecologist with the state government to travel full time with Mayank, tells The Indian Express.
Huge congratulations to India’s latest Grandmaster, and the first chess player to become a Grandmaster from North-east India – Mayank Chakraborty! Mayank becomes the country’s 94th GM.
Mayank completed his 3rd and final GM Norm at the Hotel Stockholm North by First Hotels Young… pic.twitter.com/KuykMrTJan
— ChessBase India (@ChessbaseIndia) March 13, 2026
Living in Guwahati means getting physical coaching from coaches can only happen in short stints. Grandmasters like Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury and Swayams Mishra have visited Guwahati to spend some days with the family to coach Mayank. Unlike other big-city prodigies from India, each time Mayank has to travel abroad, it means taking a trip to Delhi or Kolkata first, just for the visa procedures and then taking connecting flights for tournaments.
Swayams—who Monomita says has a Midas Touch when it comes to turning chess prodigies into grandmasters—is full of praise for the teenager. Swayams started working with Mayank in December 2021, and they had their last training session in December last year.
“His attacking skills are unmatched. They are comparable to players rated 2600 or more (even though his current rating is 2478). When I started working with him, the way he attacked was what interested me the most about his game. That and the way he handles dynamic positions, I don’t see many players having that natural talent,” says Swayams. “The last set of sessions we did was to work on his mindset, to help him believe that he could hold his own against higher-rated players. To get him to understand himself better. He wanted to understand which areas he is better at.”
Tough road to GM
The road to becoming a grandmaster is tricky enough for any player, but for Mayank, it has been more arduous than for others. It felt like he had a head start when he achieved his first grandmaster norm at the same time he achieved his first IM norm, at the Maharashtra GM Open 2023. But since then, he’s had to navigate his way past chess’ quirks to become a grandmaster: more than once, like in the Sharjah Masters B tournament last year, he had great performances but didn’t earn a GM norm simply because he had not played against enough grandmasters in the tournament, which is a requirement to become a GM.
“There are so many things that have to go your way that getting a GM norm becomes practically like a miracle,” Monomita sighs. “Last year, he won the Sharjah event, and there he performed at a performance rating of over 2600. But unfortunately, he played only one GM, that too in the last round. There were 10-12 grandmasters in that event. But those GMs were not performing at their level, and Mayank was winning. So they never faced him. So pairing is not in your hands. Something or the other like this happens. Things don’t fall in place even if you play much better than your level.
Story continues below this ad
“To get a GM norm, you need to fulfil so many criteria, right? You have to have three GMs. And then players from three federations! Sometimes you get GMs, sometimes you don’t get GMs. Sometimes you get GMs, but you don’t get federations. Sometimes you get GMs and federations, but the average rating of the other players is not up to the mark,” she adds.
Monomita says that with there not being too many sponsors helping out (he’s had support from Murleidhor Jalan Foundation in 2021), there were times when she made Mayank play in lower-rated tournaments in India only so that he could use the prize money earned there to help bear the costs of playing in tournaments abroad. But even those are a gamble.
“Actually, you don’t gain much. It’s a lose-lose situation at any cost. Because after taxes, the prize money is not too much, and there is a chance—like it has happened a couple of times with Mayank—that he ends up losing rating points even if he wins the event,” shrugs Monomita.
On Saturday, in a Swedish town, the miracle that the family had been chasing for years finally happened. Now the hope is that one miracle will lead to many more from a region that did not have many of its own to look up to.
Story continues below this ad
“Earlier players like Mayank did not have anyone to look up to. Now with him becoming a GM, more players will be inspired to chase success on the chessboard,” says Swayams.
