Niharika's journey in her own words
My name is Niharika Challa. I was born in Rudravaram village, Atchampet mandal, Palnadu district, and I currently live in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. I am delighted to have recently earned the Woman International Master (WIM) title. My current live FIDE rating is around 2281.
I achieved my three WIM norms in consecutive European tournaments during the summer of 2026:
First WIM Norm: Belgrade GM Mix, Serbia (16–22 June 2026)
Second WIM Norm: Vezerkepzo IM-B Tournament, Hungary (12–17 July 2026)
Third WIM Norm: Pontevedra Masters, Spain (24–30 July 2026)
While these three tournaments completed my title, the journey behind them has taken over twelve years.
I started playing chess in the 9th standard. From the 10th standard onwards, at around 14–15 years of age, I decided to pursue chess seriously. Although I devoted myself to the game, I never neglected my education. Alongside my chess career, I completed my Master of Business Administration (MBA), believing that academics and sports can go hand in hand with proper discipline.
My first coach, Ravindra Raju Challa, guided me for nearly ten years. Under his coaching, I developed my foundation as a player and reached the 2000 FIDE rating mark. Those years taught me discipline, patience, and the importance of building strong fundamentals.
About a year ago, during one of the most difficult phases of my career, I joined Sky Chess Academy in September 2025 for offline training in Hyderabad. At that time, I was around a 1980 FIDE rated player and had gone through a long period of disappointing performances. No matter how much I worked, the results simply were not coming. I reached a point where I genuinely considered quitting competitive chess and moving on with life.
While continuing my training with Sky Chess Academy, I also attended one-on-one offline training sessions with International Master Sarvanan Venkatachalam.
To dedicate myself completely to chess, I stayed alone at my uncle's hotel in Hyderabad and attended coaching regularly, almost seven days a week. This period required immense sacrifice, discipline, and commitment.
That phase changed because of one person who is Sai Kiran Yarlagadda, a longtime friend who became my coach and, as director of Sky Chess Academy, introduced me to IM Ajay Mushini. That introduction changed the course of my career.
Ajay sir and Sai believed in me even when I'd stopped believing in myself. Training became intense and disciplined, including analysing games, preparing openings, and sharpening calculation, yet they kept it enjoyable and kept my motivation alive. They travelled with me to tournaments, prepped me before games, and reviewed every mistake afterwards.
I'd also like to thank IM Sarvanan Venkatachalam; just three days in an offline camp with him, but his clarity of thought and teaching style left a lasting impression.
The improvement did not come from one particular training method. It was the result of becoming much more systematic and disciplined with my chess.
I joined Sky Chess Academy in September 2025, where I started working with International Master Ajay Mushini and Sai Kiran Yarlagadda. Their guidance played a very important role in the phase when my rating and overall level improved significantly.
One of the biggest changes was that my training became much more structured. Earlier, I would sometimes work on different areas of chess depending on what I felt like studying. With Ajay and Sai, there was much more emphasis on identifying my weaknesses and working on them consistently.
A large part of the work involved analysing my own games. Instead of simply checking where I had made a mistake, we tried to understand why I had made that mistake. We looked at the critical moments of the game, the decisions I made during the game, the alternatives I had missed, and the type of positions in which I was making errors. This helped me recognise recurring patterns in my play.
Calculation was another major part of my training. I worked on calculating variations more deeply and accurately, especially in positions where there were several candidate moves. The objective was not just to calculate more moves, but to calculate the right variations and make better decisions over the board.
Opening preparation also became much more serious. Rather than trying to memorise huge amounts of theory mechanically, I tried to understand the ideas behind the positions I was playing. This gave me much more confidence when opponents deviated from the main lines.
We also spent a lot of time studying middlegame positions and learning how to evaluate positions correctly. I think this was particularly important because, at a higher level, games are often decided not by an obvious tactical mistake but by a series of small positional decisions.
Another important change was my approach to tournament games. I started becoming more disciplined about preparation before games and analysis after games. After a tournament, the games were not simply left behind, but they became training material. Good games were studied to understand what I had done correctly, while losses were treated as opportunities to identify areas that needed improvement.
Once I decided that I wanted to seriously pursue the WIM title, I became much more conscious about selecting tournaments. It was not simply about playing as many tournaments as possible. We tried to choose events where I would get strong opposition, enough rated games, and, most importantly, a realistic opportunity to score the norms.
A major factor was the strength and format of the tournament. I wanted to play against strong and experienced players, including titled players, because I felt that consistently playing at that level would help me improve as a player as well as give me the right opportunities for norms.
My tournament selection was therefore a combination of several things: the average rating of the event, the number and strength of titled players, the possibility of getting a norm, the number of games, and the overall schedule. We also had to consider travel and recovery, because I was playing several tournaments in Europe within a relatively short period.
The European tournament stretch was particularly important for me. I played the Belgrade GM Mix in Serbia, the Vezerkepzo IM-B Tournament in Hungary, and then the Pontevedra Masters in Spain. Each tournament had a specific purpose, and I went into them with the mindset of taking one tournament at a time rather than constantly thinking about the title.
Check out Niharika's Games from the Vezerkepzo IM-B Tournament in Hungary
The first norm gave me confidence that the goal was realistic. The second one made me believe that I was getting very close, and by the time I reached Pontevedra, I knew that I had a genuine opportunity to complete the requirements.
Another important aspect was that I did not want to select tournaments only because they looked favourable on paper. I wanted to challenge myself. Playing stronger opposition means that you have to be better prepared, calculate more accurately, and handle difficult positions under pressure. I believe that this approach helped my chess improve along with my rating.
A lot of the tournament planning and preparation was also done together with my coaches, International Master Ajay Mushini and Sai Kiran Yarlagadda. We discussed which events would be most useful for my development and for the title requirements, rather than treating each tournament as an isolated event.
Looking back, I think the sequence of tournaments was very important. Each event prepared me mentally and practically for the next one, and that eventually helped me complete the WIM title in Pontevedra.
None of this was possible without my family. My mother supported me emotionally through every phase. My brother, an IPS officer, has been a constant source of motivation. My father supported me financially, without ever questioning results. Their belief in me kept me going.
If I had to name one quality behind my success, it would be consistency. For over twelve years, I trained almost every day, win or lose. There were setbacks, rating drops, and self-doubt, but I kept showing up, trusting that the work would pay off eventually.
I think the biggest change was not that I suddenly started working many more hours. It was that my work became more purposeful. Every training session had a reason behind it, and every tournament game became part of the learning process.
Earning the WIM title is a dream fulfilled, and it's proof that persistence gets rewarded. It's the result of twelve years of consistency and the support of my coaches and family, not one tournament or one year of work.
If my journey inspires even one young player not to quit, every struggle will have been worth it!
Niharika has annotated a few of her games for us. Have a look at them!
From a 1980-rated player on the verge of quitting to a Woman International Master with three norms in three months, Niharika Challa's rise is a reminder that breakthroughs are built, not sudden.
This article is edited by Jyotsna Bhushan.
To get notified about new articles, join the ChessBase India WhatsApp Community.
