Now that India’s remarkable success at the Candidates tournament has sunk in, it is time to think back to all the factors that have led up to it. One thing that was always present was the sacrifice of the parents. My mother used to accompany me to tournaments for years, till I was 15-16 years old and started travelling alone. Even then, she would come with me to a couple of places, as would my dad on several occasions. My parents put themselves out there a lot to support me. To some degree, that has been the case with the new crop of players too. Whether it is Gukesh D or Pragg (R Praggnanandhaa) or Vidit Gujrathi, their parents have been behind them like a wall, putting themselves through a lot personally to ensure that the boys have the support to go out and play to their best.
While that has fairly been a constant, when I was growing up, coaching wasn’t such a big part of the game. I didn’t, for instance, have a coach until I was almost 20. By then, I was already one of the best players in the world. Things are different now. You can’t play without coaching. It’s much harder because of the amount of sophistication that training methods have acquired, and because of the competition. With so many kids playing chess now, one has to ensure that one is a step ahead in the race. So, there is a huge amount of personal investment in coaches and support mechanisms. The tools of technology have exploded, forcing everyone to think of ways to maximise its benefits and include that in the training.
One of the questions that crops up frequently is what can you get in India now that wasn’t available before. The answer to that is that the chess ecosystem in India has developed tremendously over the last many decades. One of the things that happened is that the first generation of players after me went on to have successful careers of their own — they got public-sector jobs, started coaching centres and academies of their own. And so, when the generation after came in, they had access to a great many things already. For instance, Gukesh trained in Vishnu’s (grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna) academy, Pragg at (RB) Ramesh’s. The number of strong players around in the country is so high that for most of your training needs, India is a good enough place to be in. The average level of competition is very high. One needs to be on one’s toes because you are competing against the very best in the country — it’s more or less like appearing for the IIT entrance examinations or the civil services examination. This, to some degree, is new. It wasn’t there before. If you get to rise to the top in India, you are probably very close to the top of the world as well.
The other thing that has happened is, of course, that all these have contributed to an increase in the popularity of the game. Parents think it’s a prestigious career choice, people no longer consider it to be an unusual career decision. You can be an engineer, sure, but being a successful chess player is good too. Part of it also, surprisingly, has to do with how chess has been made “cool” by the world of streaming and e-sports. There are OTT series etc based on it. And that has had a big impact. People following chess on their phones have become commonplace. The Candidates tournament was widely watched. There is crucial engagement through streaming, commentary and being in the public eye has drawn the sponsors in. Earlier, the public-sector companies would sponsor chess teams, which was a big support for the game. Now, that has been supplemented by many private sponsors coming in. For instance, WestBridge Capital came in to support my academy (WestBridge Anand Chess Academy, WACA). Through that we had D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and R Vaishali among our first batch of students. Besides, India has been steadily increasing its sports expenditure and the results are showing in chess but also in many other Olympic sports.
When I was picking the mentees for the WACA, I realised that we had a wealth of people who had become grandmasters by the age of 14. The current crop of players are simply among the best in the world. Most of them are in the top 20. Maybe on a bad day, they get up to the top 30 but they have established themselves in that sphere. This is the golden generation for Indian chess. They are all fairly young — Gukesh is 17, Pragg is 18, for instance — and have their best years ahead of them. They are focused, sincere and the fact that they have a long way to go is also what the excitement is about.
The gender disparity, however, remains pretty persistent in chess, despite significant efforts to improve it. For instance, many companies and organisers try to have equal prize money for women and men. In India, the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Kolkata has separate tournaments and equal prize money. The World Chess Federation (FIDE) supports the women’s tour and has increased prize amounts because we realise that unless it is attractive enough for girls to come and take part, it won’t happen. So we have to make the extra effort. There have been some improvements. If one looks at recent performances by Koneru Humpy, Vaishali R, one can sense that there’s been an improvement. But the gap persists and needs to be worked on.
What else would I like to see more of? Well, hopefully that chess can spread more and more nationally. I think we still have regional differences in how chess is played. Tamil Nadu is the leading state, maybe even by some margin. Then you have Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal. I think it should be one of the areas of focus just to get people from everywhere to connect to the game.
The writer, India’s first grandmaster and five times world champion, is FIDE deputy president
