Vaishali Rameshbabu recently won the 2026 Women’s Candidates Tournament in Cyprus, giving her the right to compete for the Women’s World Chess Championship. She will face China’s Je Wenjun, the reigning five-time Women’s World Champion, later this year.
The 24-year-old grandmaster from Chennai finished the eight-player Candidates Tournament with 8.5 points, just half a point ahead of Kazakhstan’s Bibisara Assaubayeva. In the final round, Vaishali needed to beat Russia’s Kateryna Lagno and hope that Assaubayeva stumbles. Vaishali won her match and got some help from compatriot Divya Deshmukh, who held Assaubayeva to a draw. Vaishali has spent much of her career in the shadow of her younger brother, Rameshbabu “Pragg” Praggnanandhaa, also a grandmaster and runner-up at the 2023 Chess World Cup.
“With Vaishali, it was always a question of belief. She is such a good player, but she can lose confidence easily; she needed to work on that,” RB Ramesh, the siblings’ longtime coach, told ESPN after Vaishali’s triumph at the Candidates tournament.
Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge. [Comments? Contributions? Please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]