Boarding now, tomorrow’s chess greats

It’s Coming Home – There was good reason for Indians on social media to borrow the British soccer slogan during the Chess Olympiad in Budapest. Chess is believed to have originated in India and the Indian teams did bring trophies home, scoring a huge double triumph. Both the Open and Women’s teams won gold, with four players also winning individual golds.Since the demise of Soviet Union, this ‘double’ has been achieved only once, by China in 2018. India did it very convincingly, winning both segments with something to spare. The Open team scored 21 points in 11 matches (2 for a win/ 1 for a draw), with just one drawn match (against Uzbekistan), and won 4 points clear of a mammoth field of 193 teams. The women scored 19 points, with one loss to Poland and a draw against US, winning a point clear of a field of 180 teams.For the Open team, Gukesh and Arjun Erigaisi delivered amazing performances winning individual golds, while Praggnanandhaa, Vidit Gujrathi and Harikrishna produced solid support. For the women, Divya Deshmukh and Vantika Agrawal won individual golds, while Harika, Tania Sachdev and Vaishali played supporting roles.The 18-year-old Gukesh is due to play a world title match in Nov in Singapore, against reigning world champion, Ding Liren of China. Interestingly, Ding did not play in the key India-China encounter, opting to avoid a “prequel” to that duel. Instead, Gukesh won a hair-raising encounter against Wei Yi, finding a sequence of very difficult moves with seconds to spare. Gukesh scored eight wins and two draws in 10 games.The 21-year-old Arjun Erigaisi is now ranked World No 3, after an equally compelling performance where he scored 9 wins and 2 draws in 11 games. For the women, 18-year-old Divya Deshmukh logged 9.5 points in 11 games, dropping three draws. She’s moved into the World Top 10, and closer to the Grandmaster title. Debutant Vantika Agrawal (21) also took individual gold with 7.5 points from 9 games.Sibling grandmasters Vaishali (23) and Pragg (19) are also pretty young, making youth a leitmotif of Indian success. Yet, most of these players are veterans of the Indian teams that suffered the heartbreaking disappointment of winning “only” bronze medals at the Chennai Olympiad in 2022. The two intervening years have seen them all improving in terms of playing strength, and maybe, emotional stability.Gukesh indeed made a reference to Chennai, when he said he was looking to seek redemption since he blames himself for a loss in Chennai, which cost India gold. Youth was also a talking point in Chennai with Uzbek and Indian youngsters making their mark. Budapest indicates the youngsters have now clearly overtaken the veterans in what is increasingly a young person’s sport. And this is where India could build upon its gains after this Olympiad.Obviously Gukesh will be working single-mindedly to put it across Ding in Singapore, and if he does so, would be by far the youngest classical world champion. Arjun also has clearly stated his ambitions for the world championship. Pragg has been earmarked as a likely future champion and along with Vidit Gujrathi (who’s an elderly 28), had qualified for the last Candidates in Toronto which Gukesh won. Divya, Vaishali and Vantika have ambitions for the women’s title, as do Harika and Humpy.Then there’s a host of talented Indian youngsters who’re only a step or two lower. India has 85 Grandmasters, with a large proportion being teenagers or in their early 20s. It’s a golden generation and there’s more talent in the pipeline. There are 11 Indians ranked in the World Top 100, along with 9 in the Top 100 Women’s list. A whopping 18 of the Top 100 Juniors are Indians.Chess initially became popular in its land of origin due to the achievements of Viswanathan Anand. The multiple world champion now runs the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy, which has mentored a huge number of promising players, including at least four of the Olympiad squads.But there are other great coaches in many places, and perhaps more importantly, there are good coaches everywhere and many schools offer chess coaching as an extracurricular activity. That ensures a broad base to the pyramid. Incidentally, the two squads featured players from Chennai, Hyderabad, Warangal, Delhi, Nagpur, Vijayawada, and Nashik, which indicates that there’s no single hotspot for talent. Indian chess already has a huge fanbase and it’s likely to grow after the Olympiad double. Chessbase India has over 19L subscribers for its streaming content. It has crowdfunded many events and supports deserving youngsters. Given a young digitally savvy population, online is a preferred mode and many of India’s best players are permanently on the Web, playing blitz or streaming chess-related content.India also has a huge population of offline players – there are over 33,000 internationally rated Indians. It has been a pioneer by setting up Chess Premier League, which uses a format similar to IPL. There’s lot of corporate support, including support for training programmes. This Olympiad win could be just the beginning of decades of serious dominance. The next stop on that journey is Singapore.The writer is a chess columnist and an internationally rated chess player