Soumya Swaminathan (chess Player)

Soumya Swaminathan (chess Player) Biography

Soumya Swaminathan is a very successful Chess Player from Palakkad, Kerala. She currently holds the title of Woman Grandmaster (WGM) since 2008. She won the World Junior Girls' Championship 2009 held in Puerto Madryn, which is her major championship win up-to-date. She remained Indian junior girls' champion in 2005 and 2006, Indian women's champion in 2011 and Commonwealth women's champion in 2012 held in Chennai. In Moscow Open 2016, after tying with Anastasia Bodnaruk and Alexandra Obolentseva for the first place, she finished second on tiebreak.

Soumya hails from Palakkad, Kerala. She was born on 21 March 1989. She was two times youth girls champion before her first major success on national level – the India National Junior title in 2006. She earned her WIM title in 2007, with the super jump from 2140 ELO in the January rating list to 2315 ELO in just 1 year period. Very soon she received the Woman Grandmaster (WGM) title in 2008.

In November 2009, she won the World Junior Chess Championship for women under 20, held in Argentina, with 9.5 points and winning on tie-break. In Jan 2011, she won India National woman championship Indian Women Chess Championship 2011 scoring 8.5/11. Swaminathan Soumya dominated the championship and for the last four rounds showed firmly she is going for the title. WGM Swathi Ghate and WGM Mary Ann Gomes finished second and third respectively.

She completed B.Com from BMCC College Pune. She was a commerce student when she won India Chess Championship for the first time. Soumya speaks Tamil, English, Marathi and Hindi languages. Her interests include music and films. Her favourite player is Bobby Fischer. She has been travelling a lot, and loves it too. She lost her mother at a younger age in an accident and later her father took care of her. She misses her mother a lot, not only in her support for the game, but also for many other things.

Published: N/A

Updated: October 23, 2017