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Journalism of Courage
And then there was just one Indian left standing. From an unprecedented crop of 24 Indians who entered the FIDE World Cup in Goa, just Arjun Erigaisi finds himself in the mix to secure the title, or at least book one of the three spots into the prestigious Candidates tournament. On Sunday, veteran Pentala Harikrishna crashed out in the tiebreaks against Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara, marking the significant thinning down of India’s challenge.
Harikrishna, who plays only selective tournaments these days, had played a version of devil-may-care chess in the previous rounds, exemplified by his tactic to sacrifice his queen, the most powerful piece on the board, on move 8 in a second round game and still winning the game and the match. But against the Mexican grandmaster Alcantara, Hari’s fight finally ended after six games across three time controls over three days.
Some of India’s best bets have fallen early, including world champion D Gukesh, who started as the top seed but was sent home in the third round by German grandmaster Frederik Svane, and R Praggnanandhaa, eliminated by Daniil Dubov in the fourth round. Other top names like Divya Deshmukh, Nihal Sarin, Aravindh Chitambaram also did not stay around for long, crashing out before the tournament entered its second half.
“It is a bit underwhelming that we have only one Indian qualifying for the quarterfinals. But I think the fact that we find it underwhelming by itself shows how much we have progressed over the last two to three years,” Srinath Narayanan, who was the captain of India’s gold medal-winning Chess Olympiad team in Budapest last year, tells The Indian Express. “In 2021, when Vidit qualified for the quarterfinals, it was something huge… after Vishy Anand’s era, for an Indian to qualify to the quarters. Then we had four Indians qualifying in the last eight of the 2023 edition. But I feel 2023 was probably a period of exceptional performance rather than that being the norm. I think having one player in the quarterfinals, although it feels underwhelming in terms of the expectations that we had at the beginning, it’s nothing to feel bad about or scoff at.”
Having knocked out two legends in the previous rounds in the form of Peter Leko and Levon Aronian, Arjun’s biggest test will come in the next round, where he meets China’s Wei Yi, the only other player among the top 10 seeds still left standing besides the Indian. “Arjun had reached the quarters in 2023 too, but this time around he’s much stronger. He’s very good at this format (of the World Cup) because he excels in all the different time controls,” says Srinath.
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The second most prestigious event in the sport, the World Cup’s knockout format is a rarity in chess where players are more accustomed to the rhythms of Swiss events and round-robin tournaments, where no matter how many games you lose, you are assured to keep playing till the end of the event. The volatile format has led to plenty of upsets in Goa, with rating points—usually a good indicator of chess strength—thrown out the window. Thus, the eight-man quarterfinal field has five players — Sam Shankland (2649), Alexander Donchenko (2641), Andrey Esipenko (2681), Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara (2644) and Nodirbek Yakubboev (2689) — rated in the 2600s compared to just three in the 2700s—Arjun (2769), Javokhir Sindarov (2721), and Wei Yi (2753).
“This World Cup, in particular, is making me understand the initial reservations that a lot of top players had against the knockout format when it came into existence in 1997. One mistake can knock you out and give you no chance of returning. Because it’s only a subset of two classical games, which doesn’t give you a lot of time to prove your dominance over the other player,” says Srinath who points at the Speed Chess Championship, which is underway on Chess.com, where a match consists of more than 20 games.
“With a longer amount of games there’s a bigger sample size and the player who is stronger is going to more often than not come out on top as opposed to a sudden-death shootout. So in that sense, it’s not completely random, but I think the way the format is, does increase the likelihood of an upset.”
Srinath, who has coached plenty of India’s top stars like Arjun and Nihal in their younger days, has no hesitation in predicting: “If I had to pick one player to win the World Cup, it would be Arjun. Not just among the eight players remaining, but also, in the field of 206 from the beginning. It would be a bit of an upset if Arjun doesn’t go on and end up winning the World Cup.”
