Indian chess has had a fabulous 2024. World champion (D Gukesh), Olympiad clean sweep, an under-19 girls’ world champion (Divya Deshmukh), a best player award in the Global Chess League (Nihal Sarin) — they ticked boxes that will be hard to match. As Viswanathan Anand said after Gukesh scaled the highest peak, he would like to be proven wrong, but it will be difficult to top this.
Now, all of a sudden, these players find themselves in a territory they have not excelled yet at the senior level. The World Rapid and Blitz Championship will be held in New York from December 26-31. There are around 20 Indians in the fray in the open and women’s sections. For a change, none of them are among the favourites at the moment. Looking at history, nobody other than Anand and Koneru Humpy has done well at the top level when it comes to the Indians in the shorter versions.
Magnus Carlsen is the reigning champion in both sections. Anastasia Bodnaruk is the title holder in rapid among the women. Valentina Gunina owns that distinction in women’s blitz. There will be many more top names in contention at the venues in Wall Street. Never before did chess and the business hub of the world come so close to each other.
The Indian meaning business in this should be Arjun Erigaisi. He has to win this to qualify directly for the Candidates through the Fide Circuit. He is second behind Fabiano Caruana of USA right now. The formats are different, but that’s how the rules are. Arjun is the biggest Indian star on the horizon after Gukesh and truth be told, he faces a massive challenge because Carlsen and the other masters of the short game will be lurking around at Wall Street.
“Arjun is good at the faster versions. He is our biggest chance,” Grandmaster Dibyendu Barua told RevSportz. “I don’t see a lot of hope among the rest. It’s difficult to explain why there is a gap between the performance of this young crop when it comes to the classical and shorter formats. But truth be told, there is a difference,” said the vice-president of the All India Chess Federation.
Arjun is ranked 16th among the players enrolled for the event and R Praggnanandhaa 17th. There are no other Indians in the top 50 in the open section. Players from the country have excelled in the shorter segments of the game at the junior level. V Pranav won the under-18 rapid and blitz titles recently. Raunak Sadhwani and Nihal Sarin have also done well in the age-group circuit. When it comes to the seniors, there is a void.
“Rapid and blitz are different from the classical version,” said Barua. “Although we see that the world’s top one, two and three in classical are also good at the shorter formats, for some reason, and it’s difficult to explain, that has not happened in India yet. After Arjun, who can be quick with his moves because of his powers of intuition, there is a distance. Probably because ratings in the classical format are still sacrosanct, we concentrate more on it. But as far as the rapid and blitz varieties go, I don’t see anyone other than Arjun standing a chance.”
Possibly, the year of the Indian conquest of world chess will end on a different note. Or, who knows, there will be another exceptional performance from this pool of talented and well-prepared players. Whatever it is, shorter format is something that the Indians have not mastered, barring exceptions like Anand and Humpy. Time to change that, although things don’t look that good at the moment.
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