Indian chess legend RB Ramesh slammed the National C’ship organisers in India. Ramesh compared it to nationals at the USA and called the competitions in India as the ‘weakest’. At the US National Chess C’ship, the likes of Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana and Abhimanyu Mishra are set to feature. Meanwhile among the women, we will get to see Clarissa Yip and Alice Lee in action.
In contrast in India, the likes of D Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi haven’t featured in the National C’ship for a long time.
Taking to X, Ramesh wrote, “What a lineup in the US National Chess Championship! For over two decades, most chess players in India have dreamed of a closed National Championship where the top players compete for the National title!”
“It is unfortunate that we have not come up with a format (which every Indian chess player knows – the biggest open secret in Indian chess) that encourages and incentivises top players to play in India. India is the strongest chess-playing nation in the world, with the weakest National Championship, ” he added.
He also felt that to meet current GM norms, Indians need to participate in abroad, instead of in India.” The current reality is that, to meet GM norms and participate in high-quality tournaments, Indians have to travel abroad. The Indian open tournaments where you can make norms are few and far, and more importantly, cleverly designed in a manner that only an exceptional performance can make a norm. The organisers allow lower-rated players to participate in large numbers by charging a very high entry fee, which compromises the quality of the event,” he wrote.
He continued, “As per Grok,” Overall, fewer than 10–15 norms are estimated to have been earned in India across all 89 GMs (less than 5% of the total), with the remaining 250+ achieved abroad in tournaments across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (e.g., in Spain, France, UAE, and Greece). This trend has intensified with India’s chess boom, as players increasingly travel for norm opportunities.
“So much can be done easily to improve Indian chess by the system. Regular training camps, Indian Chess league, decent conditions (not the greedy “good conditions”) for National Championships, Strong open tournaments with a rating cutoff to make IM/GM norms, etc.
“All these were demands of chess players for at least 2.5 decades. I hope that, in my lifetime, at least one or two of these will become a reality.”
