Late on Saturday night, India added one more grandmaster to its stable after 14-year-old Ethan Vaz earned his third and final grandmaster norm at a tournament in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Chess Summer in Sarajevo – GM Mix.
By becoming a grandmaster at the age of 14, Vaz joined an elite group of players who got there so early in life. This list includes world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, world championship challenger Javokhir Sindarov, five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen besides many of India’s golden generation stars like Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Nihal Sarin, Raunak Sadhwani, Bharath Subramaniyam and Aryan Chopra.
But unlike many others on the list who got their three GM norms after playing in overseas tournaments regularly, Vaz’s norms were earned in rare jaunts abroad. Due to financial constraints, until 2023, Vaz did not travel to play in foreign tournaments unless he was representing India in Asian, Commonwealth or World events. It was only in 2023 that the Goan boy started to play in open tournaments abroad and his career found wings. He became a FIDE Master that year, an International Master in 2024 and now a GM.
“We have taken his career ahead slowly because for the initial five years, when his peers used to go overseas and play tournaments to increase their rating, we only could dream of doing it someday. For five years, we never took him overseas, other than the opportunities to represent India and win medals for the country,” Ethan’s father Edwin told The Indian Express from Sarajevo late on Saturday night. “So what makes him different is that unlike most other Indians, he’s built his strength playing in tournaments in India.”
Everything about Vaz’s fledgling career has been zara hatke. Prodigies with promise struggling to land sponsors is a common refrain in Indian chess. The families of Mayank Chakraborty and Aronyak Ghosh, India’s 94th and 95th grandmasters before Vaz, faced financial struggles, with one family even needing to sell ancestral land, pawn off family jewellery just to get their son over the line to becoming a grandmaster.
The Vazs tried a rare path: crowdfunding. Since 2022, the family has tried going the crowdfunding route to raise funds. The idea was suggested by family friends who were living abroad and had seen other athletes do it. While Edwin was not keen initially, eventually he gave in. In the first year, about 44 donors chipped in, contributing anywhere from hundreds to over a lakh.
“The crowdfunding did not get us far because I just restricted it to our friends. After the first year, I stopped asking. But there were some people who would come on their own every year and say, ‘it’s time for my contribution’. That was so heartening. The emotional support was priceless,” says Edwin.
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Edwin says that while they got decent funding from benefactors like Geno Foundation, Viswanathan Anand-backed Group e4, Quantbox, ChessBase India’s HelpChess Foundation, at the moment most of the costs for sustaining his son’s career has come from their savings, which was also their retirement corpus.
A nuclear meltdown
If nature had not played its cruel hand, Vaz would never have become India’s 96th grandmaster. In fact, he would probably not have played chess at all. The origin story of Vaz has a tsunami connection. When the tsunami hit Japan in March 2011 and led to the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown, his parents, both of them software professionals, had been living in Japan for over seven years. His father Edwin was fluent in Japanese by then. The family was even looking to buy a house in Tokyo.
His mother Linda was pregnant with Ethan at the time. But when the tsunami hit and the nuclear reactor at Fukushima had a meltdown, Edwin knew the young family had to get out.
“The tsunami itself did not affect us. But the nuclear reactor meltdown afterwards made everything radioactive. So there was a huge health risk in staying there. But maybe, it’s God’s way of telling us that this is probably the right time to go to Goa.”
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Ethan Vaz (14) earned his third and final grandmaster norm at a tournament in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Chess Summer in Sarajevo – GM Mix. (Photo by special arrangement)
Once back in Goa, they started their own IT company. And in about six months Ethan was born. The Vazs put both their sons in chess to avoid them getting addicted to TV cartoons.
“Chess was supposed to be just an extracurricular activity. We had absolutely no idea what was coming. Once he started, there was no looking back and no choice for us to even consider something else,” said Edwin.
The first sign of his promise came three months after he started learning chess. He came fifth at the state championships.
The state championship opened the doors to the nationals. But tragedy struck. Just before he was supposed to travel for the nationals, Edwin’s mother passed away. After the funeral, despite his own grief, Edwin’s father advised him that Ethan’s progress in chess shouldn’t be halted. “His grandma wouldn’t have wanted this,” Edwin recollected.
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So they travelled for the nationals and Ethan, just six months after starting the sport, ended 13th.
With the grandmaster title achieved, Edwin hopes it opens doors for his son, both of sponsors and elite invitational tournaments. Even if they don’t, the Vazs will find a way that’s zara hatke.
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