Aarthie Ramaswamy became India’s third Woman Grandmaster (WGM) on Tuesday when she played out a quick draw with FIDE Master Zeev Dub of Israel in the 9th round of the First Saturday International Masters’ Group Tournament being staged in Hungary.The former World Under-18 champion now follows WGMs Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi and Koneru Humpy in the list. According to the All India Chess Federation (AICF) secretary general PT Ummer Koya, who received a call from Aarthie last night, informed that the 21-year-old from Chennai needed just a draw for the long awaited WGM title and signed truce with Dub in just 8 moves.Wipro-sponsored Aarthie (6.5 points) is in sole second position in the ongoing tournament with just two more rounds to go. The leader, Adam Popovics of Hungary is a full point ahead of Indian and also made his International Master norm. In the 9th round game Popovics drew with Nicolas Gerard of France. International Master RB Ramesh’s hopes of attaining his final GM norm in the Grandmaster tournament ended after he lost to Women Grandmaster SzidoniaVajda of Hungary in the same tournament. Ramesh (5) is on the joint third position. Hungarians Peter Horvath (6) and Csaba Balogh (5) are tied for the 4th slot.Aarthie had claimed her first Women Grandmaster norm in the Goodricke International Open at Kolkata two years ago and the second in Sweden a year later. While crediting Arathie’s success to her hard and sincere work, Koya pointed out that it was a major achievement for the AICF’s coaching programmes that are being run in association with the Indian Government. The federation has set up a deadline of next December to produce five more GMs in both categories.Aarthie had her first major victory in 1993 when she won the national under-12 girls championship. In 1995, she won both the under-14 and under-16 National Girls championships. In the under-16 category, she triumphed over many leading girls like Vijayalakshmi, Swati Ghate and Pallavi Shah. Her first international victory came in December 1997 at the Asian Sub Junior Championship. In 1998 and 1999, she was the national under-18 champion. Her another major has been the World under-8 championship that she won as the 13th seed in Cropesa Del Mar in Spain.
