Mitrabha Guha became the country’s 72nd Grandmaster (GM) after he defeated Nikola Sedlak to bag his third and final GM norm at the GM Third Saturday Mix 220 tournament in Novi Sad, Serbia on Monday.

“It was like a dream come true for me. But I need to carry the momentum forward. It’s good that I have crossed 2500 Elo points but I think in a way it is a new beginning as well,” Mitrabha told The Telegraph from Novi Sad on Tuesday.

The match against Serbian GM Sedlak was not an easy one. He is the Serbian chess championship winner, has an individual gold medal in the Chess Olympiad and is also a EU individual open chess championship winner. But Mitrabha was confident of doing well against him. “I didn’t think about the opponent too much. I always want to play my game, and yesterday (Monday) was no different,” Mitrabha, 20, said.

On Tuesday, the last day of the tournament, his match against compatriot Sai Agni Jeevitesh ended in a draw. He has scored seven-and-a-half points in the tournament with six wins and three draws in the meet. He lost against Russian GM Vladimir Zakhartsov in the seventh round.

Mitrabha, a resident of Tollygunge in Calcutta, now has 2511 Elo points but he wants to reach the 2650 mark. “My next target is to become Super GM. I know for that I need to reach 2650 points and I have to work harder for that,” he said.

Mitrabha idolises world champion and world No.1 Magnus Carlsen.

He has defeated Carlsen twice in an online exhibition meet. When asked about that experience, the newest GM of the country said: “I want to play against him offline. And in the exhibition games, I think he wasn’t very serious. But it was a huge moral booster me,” he said.

Mitrabha is returning to the city on Thursday.

There was a congratulatory tweet from former world champion and chess legend Viswanathan Anand too. “Congrats to Mitrabha! Two GMs in two days… 100th Gm soon!,” he tweeted on Tuesday.

Guha achieved the GM title just two days after Sankalp Gupta did so during an event in Arandjelovac, Serbia, to become the country’s 71st GM.

Mitrabha had scored his second GM norm at the Sheikh Russel GM tournament in Bangladesh a fortnight ago and had also crossed the 2500 Elo barrier in the second round of the tournament.