The Indian defense: The young grandmasters on the world chess circuit

In 2021, Arjun Erigaisi made history when he became the first Indian to enter the quarterfinals of the Goldmoney Asian Rapid online chess tournament. He was the lowest-rated player when he entered and took on Levon Aronian (to whom he lost in the Aimchess Rapid after beating world champion, Magnus Carlsen). It was a magnificent show of talent – the 18-year-old proved himself against champions like Wesley So, Saleh Salem, Carlsen, and Anish Giri, to finish seventh.

Erigaisi, who lives in Hanmakonda with his family, was 13 years old when he qualified for the World Youth Championship in 2016. The youngster had begun training at the Race Academy in Hyderabad. In 2021, after the World Rapid and Blitz didn’t go his way, he knew it was time to make a choice. Erigaisi told his parents he wanted to quit college and requested their support. It was a life-changing decision in more ways than one and Erigaisi embarked on one of the best years of his chess career.

He began 2022 by winning the Tata Steel Challengers event with one round to spare, reaching a draw with the Czech Republic’s Thai Dai Van Nguyen. He was the fourth Indian to win the event. Even Magnus Carlsen, who doesn’t always concede with grace, had words of praise for the young teen, saying, “He is by far the best player (in the Challengers) and plays chess in a way that I enjoy.” In August, he also bagged the top spot at the 28th Abu Dhabi Masters (six of the top 10 spots went to Indians), going on to defeat Magnus Carlsen in October 2022 at the Aimchess Rapid, before losing out in the quarterfinals.

In October 2022, at the Aimchess Rapid, Donnarumma Gukesh made history, becoming the youngest player to beat the world champion, Magnus Carlsen. The 16-year-old, who was playing white, defeated the Norwegian champion in the 9th round, breaking Praggnanandhaa’s record by a hair. Surprisingly, the prodigy said in his post-game analysis, “Beating Magnus is always special, but I was not very proud of that game.” For a while, it looked as if Carlsen had the upper hand, only to have the tables turned by the gifted teenager.

When Gukesh’s father, Rajnikanth, noticed his son’s passion for chess, he remembered his youth. He had been an avid sportsman, playing cricket in school and making it to the state selections. His parents, however, wouldn’t hear of it, ensuring their son studied hard and became a doctor. So, when Gukesh made his passion known, he would come home from work, put his sleeping son into the backseat of the car, and drive all night across Tamil Nadu to take him to a chess tournament. “We would finish, I would put him in the car and drive back, then go to work on Monday.” When Gukesh began receiving invitations to compete at larger tournaments, his father closed his clinics and devoted himself to his son full-time.

Prolific and single-minded

Gukesh is single-minded about the game, showing little interest in other matters. For his father, there’s no debate whatsoever. “Let him choose,” he said, in an interview with ChessBase. “It’s not my decision. I could see his heart was in the game. My wife and I always needed to sit with him for his schoolwork but when he saw a book on chess or the board, he would put in everything he had.”

He’s also one of the most prolific players in the circuit. In 2021, soon after the pandemic, he played over a dozen tournaments in Europe in around four months. In 2021, when pandemic restrictions were still in place, Gukesh and his father booked one-way tickets to Europe. After the Portugal Chess Tour, they received an invitation from the European Club. Then came the Bulgaria Rapid and FIDE entered Gukesh as a wild card for the Swiss Grand Prix.

Gukesh and his father have often slept in airports as well. “We didn’t have any kind of lineage or background in the game, we were ignorant of how things were done and I guess that worked out well,” his father said. “If I see a good tournament, I can’t resist. He also wants to play. If a month passes without a tournament, he starts nagging me. He wants to play too, so I say yes.”

Out of the five Indians invited to the Aimchess Rapid online tournament, Vidit was among the three who made it to the quarterfinal. He attained the Grandmaster title in 2013 and in August 2022, was the fifth highest rated player in India, after Viswanathan Anand, Gukesh D, Arjun Erigaisi and Pentala Harikrishna. Born in Nashik, Vidit began training from a young age, finishing second at the Asian Youth Championships in the U12 category in 2006, becoming a FIDE Master as he did so.

When he was around six years old, Vidit was taken to the gymkhana to sign up for an afterschool activity. He chose chess, which he had already played with his father. “The first thing I learned at the class was king pawn versus king and how to win this position,” he tells ChessBase India. By then, he was already familiar with how to move the pieces. “I liked cricket but I was too young, so chess happened.”

Vidit stole the spotlight in 2019, when he beat Vladimir Kramnik and Shakriyar Mamedyarov to become one of four Indians to win the Tata Steel Chess Tournament. By the age of 14, he had become an International Master and four years later, was a Grandmaster. “I was 18 when I became a GM and until the age of 20, I stayed at the rating of 2650, which is decent. But I felt like I was stuck there,” he told Scroll.in. At that point, he began working with another elite player, Anish Giri, calling it a “game-changer because I started to realise how top players really work.” Being an elite GM, he says, means living at a different scale. “They have regular training camps and get lots of funding. They have a team, which is different from working alone or with just one coach.”

His motivation comes from playing the other stars. “It gets my adrenaline flowing,” he said in the interview with Scroll.in. “I know that I will improve if nothing more. Also, there is no pressure for me when I play good players. If I face Carlsen, there is no pressure, on the other hand, if I face some prodigy, then I have nothing to gain from it. But I still motivate myself. When I play Praggnanandhaa, for example, I am extra motivated. I want to get the edge and keep it.”