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Journalism of Courage
Some of the country’s most veteran grandmasters and the next line of India’s chess battlers have made their way to Guntur to compete at the ongoing National Chess Championships, being held at the Vignan University campus.
Among these are veterans like Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Sasikiran Krishnan, Sethuraman SP, Abhijeet Gupta and young stars like Iniyan Pa, Srihari LR, Prraneeth Vuppala and Aarit Kapil.
But among the 394 chess players competing at the Nationals —which include as many as 14 grandmasters and 30 international masters—one name might stand out: Dronacharya awardee Ashok Koneru
Ashok is the father and the inspiration behind Koneru Humpy, one of the biggest chess players to emerge from the country. Ashok is back on the board playing in his first rated tournament after a gap of 22 years. For the past two decades, plenty of his life was consumed by propelling the trailblazing career of his daughter, who was the first woman from India to become a Grandmaster.
Chess is not a sport that many of India’s top stars inherited from their parents. Some parents have never played a game. Some, through device, cannot tell the difference between a king and a queen. Others, like world champion Gukesh Dommaraju’s father Rajini Kanth, occasionally dabble in a bit of chess just to pass the time.
But in Humpy’s family, Ashok has always been the true chess obsessive.
“He plays online chess every day from morning to evening. There will be days when I don’t see chess at all. But he does not miss playing chess even for a single day,” Humpy had told The Indian Express in an interview after she had won the 2024 World Rapid Championship title in New York.
As a child, Humpy remembers that her father would be unhappy when she accepted a draw when she could have battled on, even if that game ended in a draw.
“Nowadays, in my opinion, Humpy is less aggressive,” Ashok had told Express earlier this year after her World Rapid title. “I want to see her at her best: as an aggressive player. She never compromised for a draw (when she was young). Always fought for a win. That’s what I want to see.”
Ashok played that same brand of fighting chess in his own career as a state-level player. In his early days, he grew up on a staple diet of Bobby Fischer folklore.
“I started playing chess because of Bobby Fischer. I followed the Boris Spassky versus Fischer match closely on the radio,” he had recollected.
Ashok initially wanted to make a tennis player out of his daughter, just like his own father. Venus and Serena Williams’ success was also a factor. Then chess just took over.
“I learnt chess from my father. He used to play both tennis and chess. When the Williams sisters were making a mark in the world, I observed that there is a lot of money in tennis. That’s why I wanted my daughter to play tennis. But she was attracted to chess while I was studying the game. When Humpy started playing, I thought I could make her like Judit Polgar (the Hungarian chess grandmaster who is the strongest woman chess player of all time). So the first thing I told her was to beat my father. He was a club-level chess player, but she beat him by the age of eight. After that, I played against her. I was a tournament-level player. By the age of 11 she was able to beat me,” Ashok had beamed.
While Ashok travelled with Humpy to events until 2011, she started preparing on her own afterwards. But, living in the same apartment complex in Vijayawada, Ashok is still at hand to give his daughter chess advice whenever she needs it. Like he did in the lead up to last year’s World Rapid Championship title, which was Humpy’s second after the one she claimed in 2019. It was Ashok’s advice to train without using a chess engine, watch videos of past world champions, play plenty of online games and solve puzzles.
In his first game back after 22 years at the Nationals, Ashok was handed a reminder of just how much the demographics of the game have changed over the past decade. His opponent was Divith Reddy Adulla, a nine-year-old from Telangana, rapidly rising up in the sport. Despite Ashok having a sizable edge in the ratings and being the 64th seed, the game ended in a draw between Ashok and a boy who is just a couple of years older than his granddaughter Ahana.
Ashok lost his second game to Swapnil Priyadarshi. But from whatever we know of Ashok, it’s likely he wouldn’t mind the loss too much as long as he lost fighting for a win.
