Baku lies 28 metres below sea level. No capital city in the world is situated lower. During the past one month, the Azerbaijan capital witnessed Indian chess soaring higher and higher, at the Chess World Cup.
First, D. Gukesh broke into the world’s top 10 and replaced five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand as India’s No. 1 in live rating (he is expected to remain in that exclusive club when the world chess governing body FIDE releases its September list). Gukesh is 17.
That was a fantastic feat, especially by someone so young. Few would have imagined it would be overshadowed by another Indian at Baku, the birthplace of Garry Kasparov, who was the world’s best player for more than two decades. R. Praggnanandhaa played a series of spectacular moves to reach the final of the World Cup, one of the most prestigious and gruelling tournaments in international chess.
He defeated the World No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura and No. 3 Fabiano Caruana before setting up the title clash with Magnus Carlsen, the undisputed king of chess for over a decade. Praggnanandhaa is 18. His birthday fell during the tournament.
In the World Cup’s quarterfinals, Praggnanandhaa’s opponent was Arjun Erigaisi. The latter put up a great fight before going down to his friend — the duo were photographed taking an evening walk a few hours before their match got under way — in the sudden death. Arjun is 19. So is Nihal Sarin, who lost to fourth seed Ian Nepomniachtchi in the fourth round; he had fought hard to take the match to the tie-breakers.
Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Arjun and Nihal indeed kept the Indian flag flying high at Baku. They belong to the golden generation of Indian chess.
The fact that they are all under 20 points towards a bright future for the country in a truly global sport that is gaining rapidly in popularity — because of a variety of reasons, such as the pandemic (the coronavirus paused virtually all other international competitions in sports), the streaming of chess events and content, and the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. ‘The Fabulous Four’ raises the possibility of an Indian domination a few years later.
They provided a glimpse to the future when three of them helped India 2 win the bronze at the Chess Olympiad last year, held at Mamallapuram near Chennai. Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa and Nihal were part of that team, while Arjun played for India 1.
Gukesh was the standout performer at the Olympiad. He scored eight wins on the trot on the top board. That is the kind of performance you very rarely get to see in chess; for the possibility of a draw is very high, and a player would not mind sharing the point, especially with black pieces. For Gukesh, the colour of the chess pieces didn’t matter at Mamallapuram. Neither did the strength of his opponent.
He just went for the win, in game after game. His performance at the Olympiad is regarded as one of the greatest of all time in chess.
Gukesh, the only child of a Chennai-based ENT surgeon and a microbiologist, won the World Under-12 title in 2018. The following year, he came close to beating the record of becoming the world’s youngest Grandmaster ever; he missed it by just 17 days.
Every chess player’s dream
Becoming a Grandmaster — every serious chess player’s dream — at 12 is no small feat, but he had wanted to be the youngest ever. He soon overcame that disappointment, as his strength as a player grew at rapid, even bewildering, speed. Everyone knew he was a special talent, but perhaps nobody expected him to break into the world’s elite so quickly.
Gukesh crossed the magical mark of 2700 Elo points last year. A chess player’s strength is determined by Elo points and currently there are only 34 players in the world with a rating of 2700 or above. Last month, he became the world’s youngest player to reach 2750. At present, there are only 12 players in that elite list.
Praggnanandhaa isn’t there yet. But he should be, before the year is out, in all likelihood. He has 2707 Elo points in FIDE’s August list and he is ranked World No. 29. He should move higher in the next list, thanks to his stunning performance at Baku, where he had begun as the 31st seed.
He wasn’t expecting to play the final, which he lost largely because of erring in time pressure in the tie-breaker. He had no trouble drawing both the classical games (of longer duration), though it has to be added that Carlsen was suffering from food poisoning.
The Norwegian was the overwhelming favourite to win the World Cup. He is, for whatever tournament he turns up at. He is an all-time great with the highest Elo rating (2882, May 2014) in history.
But, Praggnanandhaa has had a fair bit of success against Carlsen; he had scored successive wins against him last year. When he managed to take the World No. 1 to the tie-breaker of the World Cup final, he had raised hopes of a nation, where even people who had no clue about the game were following what was happening in Azerbaijan. Rarely has chess received as much attention in India.
Praggnanandhaa, the son of a bank manager and a homemaker in Chennai, had caught the attention of the chess world soon after he began playing chess. His elder sister R. Vaishali was his sparring partner at home.
Vaishali — she is now one of India’s top female players — would regularly beat him. But one day, when he was seven, he beat her. She was upset that she lost to her kid brother, but she realised he was no ordinary child. As did the world, soon.
Living up to expectations
It took the world longer to discover Arjun. The son of a neurosurgeon and a homemaker in Warangal did not exactly set the chessboard on fire early on in his career the way the other three prodigies did, but at the Tata Steel Chess India tournament — the country’s only elite event — in 2021, he was sensational. He won the title in the rapid section, after beginning his campaign as an outsider in a strong field. He nearly won the blitz title too, but had to settle for the runner-up spot after tying with Levon Aronian.
Arjun has been living up to the huge expectations since, with his superb performances across formats. He is ranked 32nd in the world with a rating of 2704.
Nihal has not touched 2700 yet. He is on 2684 and ranked 51st. The son of a doctor couple from the central Kerala city of Thrissur showed his exceptional skills in chess when he was little. He won the World Under-10 blitz title in 2013. He relishes the format, the shortest of the three (classical and rapid being the others). Carlsen, after losing to him in an unofficial online game in 2020, had called him one of the better blitz players around. He has had some significant achievements in the classical format too, like the individual gold medal he won at the Chennai Olympiad.
Indian chess could afford to dream of more golden achievements in the coming years, especially with Anand, the man who single-handedly revolutionised the game in the country where it originated, acting as the mentor of the golden generation.
