Chess | Mayank ends North-East’s long wait for a GM

Mayank Chakraborty becomes Assam's first Grandmaster, ending a three-decade wait for the North-East in chess history.

At the age of six, Mayank Chakraborty took up chess and when things didn’t go too well for him in tournament play, it made him change his mind. He tried his hand at badminton but it wasn’t smooth sailing there, either. He shifted back to the 64-squares game and hasn’t looked back since.

Mayank became India’s 94th Grandmaster, the first-ever from Assam and the North-East to achieve the title, after winning a tournament in Stockholm recently.

Tracing the journey, his mother Monomita Chakraborty, a gynaecologist, said he developed a passion for the game, improved rapidly and began winning medals.

“He won a silver medal in the under-9 Open Nationals and followed it up by becoming the under-11 National champion. He landed a silver in the under-10 open section in the Asian Youth tournament in Sri Lanka in 2019 and made winning a habit,” she told The Hindu.

Later, he won the under-17 Nationals twice and his career was looking up. His improvement and the unavailability of coaches in Guwahati meant the family had to look outside for someone to train Mayank.

“He was trained initially by GM Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury and GM Swayams Mishra for the past five years or so,” she said.