Chennai’s chess mates: Inside the clubs that shape grandmasters

When she’s about to lose, an older opponent offers a draw in a misplaced gesture of kindness. “No,” she says defiantly, eyes searching for an explanation to why someone would settle for a draw when a win is on the board. “Do checkmate!” she orders.

Rakshambika is one of 65 students at Tal Chess Club, housed within the Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Chennai’s Teynampet. The club is among the many that have played a part in shaping Chennai’s reputation as chess capital, nurturing generations of grandmasters and prodigies.

Rakshambika, one of the 65 students at Chennai’s Tal Chess Club, with her batchmates

Nearly four decades after Viswanathan Anand became India’s first grandmaster, V S Rathanvel has brought the country within touching distance of the coveted 100-GM club. On July 18, the 25-year-old from Coimbatore, who has worked with many of the Chennai coaches, became India’s 99th grandmaster.

Of India’s 99 grandmasters, 38 are from Tamil Nadu, a majority of them based in Chennai and groomed in chess academies such as Tal. It’s where the basic tenets of the sport are drilled into them: play fair, lose with grace, fight for every square inch on the board, and “do checkmate”.

Many decades ago, it was at the Tal club that a bespectacled child, about to lose to Soviet grandmaster Vladimir Bagirov in an exhibition game, had been audacious enough to offer the legend a draw. The grandmaster had brushed aside the offer and won. The child turned out to be Viswanathan Anand.

“The Tal Chess Club in Madras was like a second home to me, a place I visited so often to play chess,” Anand wrote on Instagram in 2024.

It was  Manuel Aaron, India’s first international master, who in 1971 started the club that he named after former world champion Mikhail Tal.

“When we started, the idea was to provide opportunities to budding chess players to play the sport, that too at a central place in the city. Not just to have a good time, but maybe also to produce top players,” 90-year-old Aaron tells The Indian Express from his home in Chennai.

Manuel Aaron, who started the Tal Chess Club in 1971 at the then-Soviet Cultural Centre

But the collapse of the Soviet Union was followed by a funding squeeze and the centre, then housed in the House of Soviet Culture, shut down in 1991. A couple of years ago, a few chess lovers approached Alexander Dodonov, Director of Russian House in Chennai, to start classes again.

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At the Tal club, there are 25 children who have turned up for the coaching session on a Thursday evening. Sivaranjani, the co-ordinator, informs that the club has 65 students spread across three batches through the week. An average session at the club has 30 minutes of students doing puzzles, 30 minutes for demonstration sessions and 30 minutes of the game.

Syed Emad is a rare rated player at the Tal club — 1,604 in blitz and 1,565 in rapid

The emphasis, Sivaranjani says, is on getting children to fall in love with chess and then, get them to gain some early competitive exposure through state-level or FIDE-rated tournaments.

All the 65 students at the club are “beginners” getting their first formal education in the sport, with the youngest three years old. Part of this cohort is eight-year-old Syed Emad, who can smell tactics from a mile away and walks with a pocketful of mischief. Syed is a rare rated player at the club — 1,604 in blitz and 1,565 in rapid.

Monish B, one of the five coaches at the club, says that when the club reopened its doors two years ago, it did so with around 25 students. “But after Gukesh became the world champion, lots of children started playing the sport,” says Monish.

The Tal Chess Club operates out of Chennai’s Russian House

Grandmaster Srinath Narayanan, early-stage guru to India’s top players Arjun Erigaisi and Nihal Sarin, says Chennai’s chess clubs cater to specific needs. If the Tal club is trying to catch them young and get them to fall in love with the sport, there are others where chess is looked at with a more competitive lens.

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As dusk descends on Chennai, a first floor house in T Nagar comes alive. Children march in, one by one, bags on their back, bouncing on the balls of their feet like they are here for a birthday party.

Before you know it, 15 children have gathered in the main hall. They sit across tables, 10 of them, their heads bowed in attention to the chess mats laid out in front of them. There’s another room for the smaller children.

This club, Chess Gurukul, founded by Grandmaster R B Ramesh in 2008, holds a place in India’s chess history. It was here that some of the country’s top grandmasters — Praggnanandhaa R, Vaishali R, Aravindh Chithambaram and Pranesh V — were shaped into world-beaters.

Chess Gurukul in T Nagar, Chennai, runs eight batches on weekends, four batches from Monday to Thursday, and two more batches on Friday.

Kunal M, a FIDE Master and an international master-elect, is coaching the group of 15 at Chess Gurukul today. At a time when conversations about chess are about how computers have altered preparation and training, the club adopts a conservative approach — there are 10 chess mats and just one laptop, which is used by the coach.

The numbers that walk in through Chess Gurukul’s doors are mind boggling. The academy has eight batches, each with 10 to 12 children, on weekends. Mondays and Wednesdays see four batches each, and another four Tuesdays and Thursdays. There are two more batches on Friday. Besides, there are hundreds of children who sign up with the academy for online training. The academy’s 40 online batches cater to everyone from aspiring chess players to grandmasters.

Coach Kunal says the 15 in today’s batch are an advanced set of players, many of them rated above 1,600. The range Indian chess has at its disposal is apparent when, on one side are children who can barely look over the head of the king on their board, while there are others who are already rated beyond 2,100.

The evening’s session starts with Kunal reading out the move order of a historical game. As he does so, players recreate the game on their boards. Then, they are asked to guess which grandmasters played the game. It’s a way to sharpen not just their calculation, but their grasp of history as well. Eventually, the players get down to the combat on the board. A big part of the session is spent in detailed analysis of the game.

“I value discipline from players. The focus is on effort over results. Children these days get too focussed on their FIDE rating,” says Kunal.

Kunal is very particular about the skill he wants his young players to sharpen: calculation. It has almost become India’s calling card in world chess. In an interview with The Indian Express in 2024, Magnus Carlsen was asked if he had spotted common traits in the different generations of Indians he has played with, from Anand to Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa. “Most players have supreme calculation skills,” Carlsen had said.

The Napier bridge, painted in a black and white checkered pattern, ahead of the 44th International Chess Olympiad at Chennai’s Mamallapuram

A few years ago, Praggnanandhaa had revealed the kind of visualisation sessions he and his sister Vaishali would do in this T Nagar house that helped them trek their way to the top.

“We would recreate a position on the board and then start calculating from there. We would be past Move 15 but we would still have the pieces rooted in the same position on the board. We had to then visualise (the lines) in our mind. It was not just about visualisation alone, but also about finding good moves there. Those drills help us now when we are playing some complicated game and trying to calculate ahead,” Praggnanandhaa had told The Indian Express in 2024.

Also in T Nagar is the Madras School of Chess, started by Vishnu Prasanna, the grandmaster who shaped world champion Gukesh. This academy has a second branch at Anna Nagar, with both branches together training around 100 players.

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Morning breaks over Periyar Nagar, a tree-lined residential neighbourhood in Chennai. Three young players sit facing their chess mats in a room on the first floor of a building. This is Chess Thulir, an academy started by grandmaster Shyam Sundar. The rest of their friends are currently playing in tournaments, some testing their chess chops with Shyam in Europe.

The room is silent except for the insistent tick-tick-tick of the wall clock. Their trainer, Hemanth Raam, has just started the day’s session by reading out a position. It doesn’t get re-created on the board. You can almost hear the 32 miniature soldiers yawn out of boredom; they haven’t been moved at all.

But in the minds of the players facing the boards, there is a tick-tick-tick of another kind. “Can someone repeat the position?” asks Hemanth. This, a blindfold chess activity to start the day, is what Hemanth calls a “warm up”.

“For white, king f3, a4, b3, d5, f2, g4, h5. For black, king g8, a7, b6, f6, g5, h6. Black to play,” Gurubaran R says without skipping a beat.

Gurubaran has been training at this academy, in the same room, for six months now. Ask him what the colour of the wall is, and he gets it wrong. But a chess position he has been told 30 seconds ago, he rattles off like it’s his own phone number.

Footballers have their keepie-uppies, juggling socks and oranges when they want to show off their skills. Chess players just play without moving the pieces, the games rumbling in their mind.

The day’s session started at 10.30 am, and will stretch on till 4.30 pm. It’s International Chess Day today, but in these rooms, the only date that matters is the next tournament day.

The perpetually smiling and chatty Gurubaran is a 13-year-old who has touched a rating of 2,198 and only last August won the Group B section at the 25th Sant Marti Open in Barcelona. Joining him is 11-year-old Yakshini P, who says 10 words a session and that too, only when absolutely necessary — the perfect exponent of a sport that requires hours of meditative silence. She recently won the under-11 girls title at the School National Chess Championship and a silver in the Youth Asian Chess Series held in Bangkok. Joining them is 11-year-old Atul Gupta, who hails from Maastricht, the southernmost city in the Netherlands.

Chess Thulir is another academy in Chennai where children learn to play the game

Gupta is not the only player who has travelled from abroad to learn at Chess Thulir. M A Sriiyukthaa, rated 2,146 already at age 10, lives in Muscat, but will spend two months in Chennai for the offline camp.

“She has been doing online sessions with Chess Thulir for three years now. But we have also been flying down to Chennai every year, for around 20 to 30 days each time, so that she can join the offline session. This year, we will spend two months in Chennai because we have noticed drastic improvements in her playing,” says Abirami, Sriiyukthaa’s mother.

Back at the centre, warm-up done, the players move to the grind of daily chess. Hemanth now replays a 2012 game between Magnus Carlsen (playing with white) and Viswanathan Anand. After announcing the first few moves, Hemanth stops and asks the three players to find the best candidate moves for white.

Ideas are thrown and refuted, heads are scratched. At one point, after enough candidate moves have been refuted, Atul, the 11-year-old from the Netherlands, suggests that they check with an engine what the best move is.

“Engines are not allowed in this class,” says Gurubaran. “Gukesh anna did not use engines till he was almost a 2,700-rated player!”

It was at clubs like these that Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa once dreamt of becoming the next Anand. Now, there is a generation that is trying to retrace the path that Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa took to the top. Chennai’s conveyor belt of chess keeps moving.