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Journalism of Courage
Indian chess fans will likely remember Boris Gelfand as the man who took on Viswanathan Anand in the 2012 World Chess Championship, where the title was decided by jousts in the rapid tiebreak formats after the 12 classical games had ended in a stalemate.
That was Anand’s fifth World Championship title, with the Indian losing the crown to Magnus Carlsen the next year,
The equation between players who have faced off over the board with the world champion’s crown on the line can be frosty, or at best, distant at times.
Anand and Gelfand, though, are friends with the Soviet-born Israeli GM now helping the five-time world champion as a mentor at the Indian’s academy, Westbridge Anand Chess Academy. His association with Indian chess also extends to him occasionally helping the national chess team at the coaching camp.
Ask Gelfand if he has one enduring memory of India’s top prodigies — D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and Arjun Erigaisi — and he quips: “The spark in their eyes when they see a chess board.”
Gelfand was in Kolkata for a short camp ahead of the Tata Steel Chess India tournament where The Indian Express caught up with him. Excerpts:
You’ve seen the Viswanathan Anand generation, the generations of players that came after him and now this generation of teenage prodigies. How is this generation of Indian players different from the ones that came before?
We cannot generalise. Some of them have amazing talent, and it’s really a golden generation. Of course, they learnt things much quicker because of the tools available now. They play much more than we used to play. They learnt a lot from games (of their predecessors). They’re very motivated. Maybe, they’ve had different mediums to learn aspects of the game than us, but they are as motivated and ambitious as us.
And how does this generation of Indian teenagers compare to the players coming out one after the other in the Soviet era?
There are some years when a unique group of players appears. Look at these Indians. For the Soviet Union, some years were fruitful years, where a lot of good players appeared. There were some years where good players appeared but no one made it to the very top.
Does it almost feel like a different sport than when you started learning it?
Of course, this generation has a big access to information. But also, nowadays there is too much information. To navigate through that excess information is maybe as challenging as it was for us (back in the day) to navigate without information.
When you speak of too much information and needing to avoid overloading yourself, do you have to tell that to this Indian generation?
These Indians know it! I might have to tell this to players who are less experienced. But these Indian players don’t need anyone to tell them that.
Do you sense that Praggnanandhaa and the others have become more confident after the FIDE World Cup (where four Indians made it to the quarter-finals for the first time ever, with Pragg making it all the way to the final)?
Yes, they all gained confidence from the World Cup. Not just Pragg, the others too. All of them are getting more confident. But still they’re working on chess with the same diligence and ambitions in mind.
Not just at the Asian Games camp, you have also worked with many of these prodigies at the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy. Can you talk to us about your role at WACA?
I show them some games and try to explain how I would take a decision in that situation. I try to explain my thinking process. I analyse games of some of the players to see what was good and what went wrong at recent tournaments. This helps them understand how they can adjust their game.
