Author: Atreyo Mukhopadhyay

Arjun Erigaisi is not letting it go without a fight. To qualify for the Candidates next year, he has to win the ongoing world rapid chess competition. That’s not all. The player he is trailing in the qualification race through the FIDE Circuit, Fabiano Caruana of USA, has to finish outside the top 23. After nine of the 13 rounds, the Indian youngster is tied at the top on points and third on tie-break score. He has seven points, with three others. Caruana is 24th with six points. It is going just the way Arjun would have liked. He can…

On a day Indian players moved into the joint lead in the open and women’s sections, the big bang came from an unexpected quarter. Magnus Carlsen withdrew from the world rapid and blitz chess championship in New York after the organisers refused to allow him to play wearing a pair of jeans. You read it right. This is not a writing error. FIDE — the world governing body of chess — has a dress code which doesn’t allow jeans for players of either sex in the competitions it conducts. Carlsen was fined $200 after the seventh round (second round of…

The Indian campaign at the world rapid and blitz chess championship in New York got off to a modest start. Raunak Sadhwani and Arjun Erigaisi scored four points each from the first five rounds in the rapid format – to be played over 13 rounds – in the open section. Four players, lower rated than the top guns, secured 4.5 points each. At the moment, Raunak is fifth on the table and Arjun 12th. Magnus Carlsen, the reigning champion and World No. 1 across formats, endured a disappointing day in the event dubbed the Wall Street Gambit, because of the…

Hopes are high and expectations moderate. Their wonder year notwithstanding, the Indian youngsters are not among the favourites in the world rapid and blitz chess championship beginning in New York. That’s because they are not as proficient in the shorter formats. Their exploits in the classical or longest format shouldn’t be a yardstick when it comes to speed chess. The world rankings across the variations make it clear. In the open section in classical, there are three Indians in the top-10 and five in the top-25. This number is two in the top-25 in rapid including Viswanathan Anand, a…

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…

An 18-year-old who looks and behaves beyond his age, he turns up suited-booted for his games and sports a sacred white dot on his forehead. He doesn’t talk big and stays calm at the time of jubilation. When the year started, nobody had an inkling that this boy from Chennai would be the runaway sportsperson of the year for India. Nobody ruled his or her sports in 2024 like D Gukesh did. In few other disciplines — possibly with the exception of French swimmer Leon Marchand, who won four Olympic gold medals in Paris — did an individual win every…

The best thing about the D Gukesh fairytale is it doesn’t end there. He is, at the moment, on top of a pyramid which has a strong foundation. There are several Indians already at the elite level. A few more are getting closer. The depth in chess is formidable and the rate of growth high. India is second in the world, behind the USA, in the average Elo ratings of a country’s top 10 players. The new world champion not being the highest-rated Indian confirms this is a serious pool. That honour goes to Arjun Erigaisi, who has become the…

In world chess, 2024 will be remembered as India’s year. Making it more specific, it was the year of the youngsters from the country. The game was anticipating an Indian upsurge anytime. This bunch of boys and girls were making their presence felt in major events. D Gukesh’s triumph at the World Championship announced emphatically that they have arrived big time. This was coming. The first signs were seen at the Chennai Chess Olympiad in 2022. The Indian men’s team won bronze — for the second time after 2014 — while the women clinched a first bronze. Then, four Indians…

Along with celebrations in India following D Gukesh’s coronation as the youngest-ever world chess champion, there were clamours in certain parts of the world. Not everybody took this in the right spirit and even alleged foul play. This isn’t new. Even before this championship duel, some top players had said that the winner would not be the rightful world champion. The most sensational of these outbursts came from the Russian chess federation. Almost immediately after Gukesh dethroned Ding Liren, it accused the Chinese of making a bad move deliberately. It was the 55th move of that 14th and final game,…

Atreyo Mukhopadhyay in Singapore Equarius Hotel is a luxurious property in Resorts World Sentosa. This was the centre of global attention for the last 18 days or so. This was the venue for the World Chess Championship match between Ding Liren and D Gukesh. It witnessed history, as the Indian defeated the Chinese defending champion in a dramatic final game to become the youngest-ever winner of the crown. When I landed in Singapore to cover this match for RevSportz, there were butterflies in my stomach. Being primarily a cricket reporter all my life, I was at sea because this was…