Bull run on the chessboard: As number of GMs from India surges, casual fans from nation too rising

Neither Kramnik nor Carlsen are men with reputations for puffery. The Norwegian World No 1’s prophecy of India becoming the ‘leading chess nation in the world’ is one that’s backed by cold data, not just about professional Indian grandmasters and international masters but also semi-serious and casual players where there has been exponential growth mirroring the trend at the pro level.

At the top of the pyramid, there are currently nine Indians in the top 100 spots of the FIDE classical chess rankings: Viswanathan Anand (World No 9), Gukesh D (No 13), Vidit Gujrathi (26), Arjun Erigaisi (30), Pentala Harikrishna (32), Praggnanandhaa (47), Nihal Sarin (53), SL Narayanan (85) and Aravindh Chithambaram (100). From this list, players like Gukesh, Erigaisi, Praggnanandhaa and Sarin are still in their teens — the generation that Kramnik referred to as an “absolutely outstanding Indian generation”.

This year we're excited to welcome 16-year-old Indian GM, @DGukesh, the youngest player ever to defeat Magnus Carlsen, and the youngest Indian player to cross 2700, and break into World Top 100❗️

Here is Gukesh's message to Norway Chess 🔽 pic.twitter.com/lEeArDrMJF

— Norway Chess (@NorwayChess) April 2, 2023

Then, at the middle of the pyramid is a group of over 50,000 players that Emil Sutovsky, the Director General at FIDE, the global governing body of chess, classifies as “really good players, but not grandmasters” from India. “But these players are vital to the growth of the chess ecosystem as they are or can become chess coaches, arbiters etc,” he tells The Indian Express.

Younger and stronger

There has been a rapid acceleration in the ranks of Indian GMs in the last five years. After Anand became the first GM from India in 1988, even 10 years later, that number stood at three. By 2008, or two decades since Anand paved the way, that number had trudged up to 18.

Contrast that with the past four and a half years between January 2019 and July 2023 where India produced 24 grandmasters. Not only has the conveyor belt of GMs picked up pace, the players emerging from it are younger too.

A glance at the list of the 10 youngest chess players to become GMs has four Indians, including Gukesh (who became a GM at 12 years), Praggnanandhaa R (12 years), Parimarjan Negi (13 years) and Raunak Sadhwani (13 years).

For a player to earn a GM title, he/she needs to earn three GM norms and achieve a minimum rating of 2500.

A “norm” is a high-level of performance at a chess tournament. A player much compete in a tournament which satisfies the following conditions: it must have at least three GMs from different countries and the competition must be held over nine rounds. Moreover, an international arbiter must be present. The player needs to earn a performance rating of 2600 (this is a rating at the tournament, not to be confused with the overall rating).

“When I was growing up, to meet even a single Grandmaster, I had to wait an entire year. Back then, in India there was only one tournament in Kolkata in February. That was the only time you met a GM. Otherwise, you were trained by local club players. They were good by heart, but they had their limitations,” says Surya Shekhar Ganguly, who became the 8th GM from India in the early 2000s.

The current generation of teenaged GMs benefitted from multiple factors: internet chess events post-pandemic enabled them to play some of the biggest names which reduced the aura of the super GMs. But the bigger factor was that Indian grandmasters who broke onto the scene one or two generations before these teenaged chessboard warriors had branched out into coaching.

“Players like RB Ramesh (India’s 10th GM) retired and started coaching. He trained many GMs like P Karthikeyan, Arvind Chidambaram and Praggnanandhaa. Vishnu Prasanna (33rd GM from India) trained Gukesh. Srinath Narayanan (India’s 46th GM) trained Nihal Sarin. Because they got quality training from a young age, these young players did not learn anything wrong! Their coaches had an idea of what the highest level looks like!” adds Ganguly, who joined hands with Ramesh and another GM, Magesh Panchanathan, to open an academy in 2021 called Pro Chess Training.

At Pro Chess Training, they train five different groups of players, with the highest group — which currently includes Prags and Karthikeyan — being one with players who are 2300 and above. At one point, Sadhwani and Vantika Agarwal trained there. Erigaisi trained there, albeit briefly.

In 2021, Anand also started an academy, the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy, which was meant to train players who had become GMs under the age of 14. The initial group had five players: Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa, Sarin, Vaishali and Sadhwani.

How the pandemic aided Indian chess

As the world came to a standstill due to the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 and people were confined to their homes, the stock of chess began to rise as casual fans — the base of the Indian chess pyramid — confined to their homes searched for hobbies.

But at the professional end, some players capitalised on the downtime offered by the pandemic.

“Before the lockdown, I was just a normal GM. I would say I wasn’t anything special. My rating was around 2550 and I was playing in good tournaments from time to time. But 2021 and 2022 were two years that really changed my career. I made huge leaps. That’s because of the work I put in during the lockdown,” says Gukesh, the boy who Anand anointed as the youngster who is the most ready to make the cut for the next Candidates event.

Gukesh had been playing chess non-stop before the pandemic. When the lockdowns were imposed, he played a lot of online events initially. Then he made the conscious decision to completely shut off online chess and emphasize on being in shape when the world reopened and classical tournaments restarted.

We love chess#wrchessmasters pic.twitter.com/d0zc6nU15j

— WR_Chess_Masters (@wr_chess) February 19, 2023

He also made a recalibration of a long-term goal. His trainer, Vishnu, had instructed the teenager that he was not to use chess engines until he reached a rating of around 2700. But in the pandemic, as his focus turned to prep, they decided the time was right for him to start working with engines.

As GM Pravin Thipsay points out: “The pandemic came as a boon because earlier Indians wanted quick results. For some of the previous generation of players, there was a sort of moral obligation to play well and win in international tournaments. They didn’t have the time to improve their strength.

“But these teenaged players concentrated in the pandemic on improving their class. When you’re playing tournaments back to back you’re not really trying to improve your class. You’re trying to improvise your openings and results.”

Sutovsky points out the universal tenet that fans love a prodigy. And they love a prodigy from their own country even more. And in India’s case, there emerged a herd of prodigies, all jostling with each other to reach the mountaintop first.

Digital gains

While technology has gotten much better since Anand’s time, Ganguly says that tech has actually been a leveller in the sport. “Today, a Magnus Carlsen cannot say that he has the stronger machine. Everybody has the same access. That age is gone (where only top GMs had access to top hardware and software),” he points out.

Not just access to chess engines, now, thanks to the internet, a GM in even a remote town in India can get training from a GM in India or even abroad.

“The growth of Indian players was partly due to them playing online competitions. Playing not just with top players but also getting accustomed to playing Magnus or other top stars,” says Sutovsky. “This is more than a boom. It’s a trend,” he argues.

Such has been the trend, not just in India but the world over, that Chess.com, the world’s leading online portal to play the sport, is struggling to cope up with the demand. The portal said that on December 31 last year seven million active members visited the site in a single day.

These numbers are also reflective in the Indian context.

According to data shared with The Indian Express by Chess.com, of the 7,729 new users the site acquired on August 1, 2019 just over 15 percent came from India. Comparatively on August 1, 2022, that number had risen to just over 20 percent (6,162 new users from India out of 30,292 overall).

Other parameters also show the uptick: the monthly active users on Chess.com from India on October 1, 2020 (when lockdowns had been lifted and restrictions eased) was just over 4.6 lakh. The corresponding numbers for October 1, 2021 and October 1, 2022 were 7.8 lakh and 10 lakh. By February 2023, that number was just over 13 lakh.

“We thought after the world opens up from the pandemic, there will be a plateau in the numbers. But in January 2023, we had to buy a new server because our website was crashing,” says IM Rakesh Kulkarni, who is the Director of Chess.com India.

Kulkarni draws direct correlations to the growth in Indian GMs doing well to more people in the country taking up the sport casually.

“When Praggnanandhaa defeated Magnus Carlsen at the Airthings Masters in February 2022, which was part of the Champions Chess Tour, Sachin Tendulkar and PM Narendra Modi tweeted about it. So that led to a lot of interest in the sport itself. Then he beat Carlsen three times in a row in another tournament,” he says.

He also points out that the eye-watering money some teenagers from India are making from the sport is driving the interest in chess among parents. For example, the Champions Chess Tour had a prize fund of $2 million. Sarin, who was runner-up at the Global Chess Championship took home around Rs 80 lakh in one tournament. Praggnanandhaa crossed over Rs one crore in 2022 in just his winnings from tournaments.

The success at the top is pushing the surge at the bottom and that’s also leading to more events being organised at the grassroots.

“Five or six years back there used to be just one tournament happening on any given day in Mumbai. But now there are days when there are four tournaments going on in different parts, and all of them have more than 200 players participating. I won’t say that five years back it was not possible to host simultaneous events. But it was unthinkable from an organiser’s perspective,” says Sahil Ghate, Director of Upstep Academy, a chess academy based in Mumbai.

What the pandemic also did was make it acceptable for parents to seek online coaching for their kids, a concept they earlier frowned at, adds Ghate.

One GM mentions how a nifty marketing tactic from online chess portals was also powering this upsurge in the number of casual players.

“A newcomer to the sport who has been playing for a year or two will have an ELO rating of around 1000 or 1100. But there are ratings on some portals for solving chess puzzles. Some players with a rating of 1000 in regular chess will have ratings of 2500 for solving puzzles on the portal. In regular chess, that’s the rating an average GM has. The puzzles are so simple. But the player is thrilled and that keeps the player coming for more,” the GM says.

It was in the pandemic that the Netflix show Queen’s Gambit spurred interest in the sport as did the various streams hosted by influencers and stand-up comics which gave a fun twist to what was a deathly-serious sport.

As Sutovsky points out, chess enjoys a unique advantage over most sports since many top stars are always at hand to offer their insights and analysis into significant games either via streaming or on chess portals. During the World Chess Championship, for instance, GM Hikaru Nakamura was breaking down games on his YouTube channel for fans within hours of the games ending, while other GMs like Anish Giri were doing live analysis on Chess.com.

The next step

Sutovsky believes that the next step for India (which he calls a ‘strategic partner’ for FIDE) now is to host big-ticket events. The recent Chess Olympiad in Chennai — where around 2,200 participants from 187 countries came to India — showed the scale at which India can host events.

“India is very important for FIDE. Which is why it is important for us to have FIDE-approved events happening in India. That’s where the Global Chess League came into the picture (which FIDE is organising with Tech Mahindra). There’s also a Women’s Grand Prix in New Delhi,” says Sutovsky who adds: “Now, as the Olympiad proved, the country is ready for something significant.”