Look at the ten faces up there, and it's an incredible sight. The World Championship may be the absolute pinnacle of chess, but nothing comes close to the Chess Olympiad in testing the arsenal a country has at its disposal, in displaying the strength of a nation's system. India swept double gold in the tournament's 45th edition to prove a major point: the land that had (as most historians suggest) invented the sport was here to take the throne... and they had been brought here by a group of young hyper-talented chess geniuses.
By now, you'll know their names already. The experienced Pentala Harikrishna, Vidit Gujrathi, Tania Sachdev, and Harika Dronavalli. The youngsters Dommaraju Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Rameshbabu Vaishali, Divya Deshmukh, Vantika Agrawal. And these are just at the very top of the Indian game - below them there are a whole lot more GMs and IMs, all at various stages of clambering up the chess world.
No country is currently producing Grandmasters at the rate India is, and the Olympiad performance was validation of the growing feeling that Indian chess was finally learning to step out of the great Vishy Anand's shadow. It's a pattern that's recognized by almost everyone now -- from the Prime Minister of the country to chess content creators around the world, everyone wants a piece of the magic. And this is where a combination of greed and introspection kicks in. Look at the profiles of the vast majority of the elite chess players in the country and you'll see an underlying commonality -- primarily that their backgrounds are pretty similar: Urban, middle or upper-middle class, and largely concentrated in the state of Tamil Nadu. Imagine the possibilities if this spread out even more. Reached regions and peoples and communities across the length and breadth of this vast country. Imagine the talent pool that's lying out there, just waiting to be tapped into.
Just running into a random chess player! pic.twitter.com/UC8EkcnXm5
- Viswanathan Anand (@vishy64theking) September 23, 2024
It's far easier than you'd think.
Chess as a sport requires little infrastructure, and even less space to catch a hold. It's 64 pieces and a board, you don't even need a table to start off, and the basic rules are simple enough: certain pieces move certain ways, and you do everything you can to protect your king and attack the other one.
Here, you may laugh at me for calling something that's universally perceived as complex and complicated as a simple sport, but if there's one core ingredient that marks out chess, it's memory. That's what the sport boils down to: How much you remember of everything you've learnt, and when to apply it.
It's not unique to chess; every sport is nerdy at its zenith. Radamel Falcao once told football writer Sid Lowe that he could draw up and describe each of the 300 or so goals he's scored in professional football. Glenn McGrath can still remember each international wicket he's taken, the shape of the ball as it left his hand each of those 949 times, what the pitch was doing, where the field was set.
It's not just the elite players, either: if you're a cricket fan and you see 143 (131) do you just dismiss them as random numbers? Or does a vision of Sachin Tendulkar taking Sharjah by storm take you by force? A football fan may be stunned at how a Magnus Carlsen remembers which game it is simply from seeing pieces aligned in a fashion on a chess board, but take out the names and identities and draw them a line tracing Diego Maradona's run in that '86 quarterfinal and how long will it take them to figure it out?
That is a fundamental part to demystifying chess. Of course, there's a degree of intelligence and skill that one needs to play chess that's different from a more physical sport like cricket or football, but that is only as out of reach of the common man as the latter is.
Arjun Erigaisi, world no.3, member of that gold winning Olympiad team and an individual medalist there, says that adoption of chess, like any sport, takes time: "It doesn't have to be like you start playing and you get results," he told ESPN. "Sometimes the results may take time but if you're working hard and you're enjoying it, then they will come."
"I think [with] the kind of attention chess is getting right now, it's already a good start in the right direction," he says. "I think people do recognize that you can... not just play it for fun and pleasure, but also make a career out of it."
That bit's important too -- no sport can make it past hobby/pastime level if a clear career option isn't available. For generations like Arjun, it was Vishy Anand who served as the inspiration. Like he says, maybe not for the young players themselves but for the parents who are thinking of their children's careers. "Now we have a lot more examples," he says with a smile. "As the number of examples grow, the chances of more and more people coming to chess and making a career out of it also grows."
Which is why he believes chess is already a viable career option. It also helps that the sport itself is willing to continuously experiment. Take for example the nascent Global Chess League where the world's best players team up with each other and duel in short, exciting matches.
"A league [like the GCL] is important in growing the sport. Like how it happened in the IPL in cricket over the last decade or so - the GCL is for sure a good start," Arjun says before talking about how it would also be "nice" if there's a tournament where the teams are city based so people can relate to it more. This is, after all, how top European chess leagues like the German Bundesliga operate. Which begs the question: why can't India - a nation that has a pro arm-wrestling league - try it out?
Dutch GM Anish Giri too agrees about the aspirational value of different tournaments like the GCL- and how that helps shape career choices.
He is also one of those at the forefront of deconstructing chess, making it more accessible. One of the world's best players, he's a constant online presence -- amongst the elite GMs who have shed their cloaks of mystery and talk directly to fans and spectators through various mediums. Giri, speaking to ESPN, believe that chess content, and their sheer variety, helps popularize the game immensely.
"You can analyze games in depth...every single move is being discussed, every single nuance. And that is for some people, for some very, very niche audience, that understands and appreciates it very much," he says. "But there's also content where you just see Gukesh walking and there is some nice music to it and everybody can relate and they just think, 'Oh! this guy looks cool, I want to be like him'. And it just works for everybody. There's something for everyone out there and that's wonderful."
Content creation and GMs and GCLs help facilitate it, but how do you spread the game in the first place, though? The key, perhaps, lies in how Giri describes the rise of chess in different countries.
"The thing about chess is that it grows in all sorts of different directions," he says as he talks about how chess is perceived globally. In places it's "just" a board game like ludo, in others a far more serious endeavour. But he's says, as a sport, it's growing everywhere and it's doing so differently.
"In Hungary, for example, Judit Polgar has promoted chess-in-schools programs," he says. 'She's been working on that and showing the benefits of chess to young kids, trying to get old children to familiarize themselves with chess concepts because it's a special game. It's a great tool to learn. It teaches kids consequences in life to think ahead before they're moving all that. And all these basic things, they really work."
"In the Netherlands, there is a culture of clubs. There are a lot of chess clubs and it's an activity for people after work to enjoy themselves. In Russia [where Giri picked up the sport growing up], the clubs focus on children. There are no adults in the clubs. It was a thing for children. There is no club competition like there is in the Netherlands. It's a post-school activity for the most part."
Where he talks about different countries, why not think of Indian states as different ecosystems, at different stages of chess adoption? What will work in Tamil Nadu may not work in a Rajasthan or a Mizoram. What may work in an urban centre may not work in a tier 3 town or a village deep in the hinterlands... so why not try something else, why not customise? If we start with that basic identification, the existing administrative support could then try going about implementing phase-wise plans for the development of the sport in those regions.
Chess is a brilliant sport, and after years of dormancy (and looking up at one man's greatness in wonder and awe), India's waking up to it again. It's on the powers that be to make sure that every part of this great nation gets the chance to not just see, but be a part of this bright, bright dawn.