Atreyo Mukhopadhyay
Floating under the dizzy heights reached by his peers, Nihal Sarin was looking for his own space and scope. He has succeeded in meeting some of those goals this year. Amidst ups and downs, timely performances helped him secure a berth in the biggest event of 2025, win a tournament in Tashkent and touch the 2700 Elo rating mark separating the elite from others. In doing so, he has set himself up nicely for the FIDE World Cup. The knockout event in Goa from October 31 to November 27 offers three tickets to Candidates 2026.
A prodigy who became a Grandmaster and crossed 2600 at 14, Nihal was a part of the ‘India 2’ team which clinched bronze at the 2022 Chess Olympiad. Among his teammates were D Gukesh and R Praggnanandhaa. Arjun Erigaisi was in the ‘India’ team finishing fourth. They are around the same age. In 2024, those three struck Olympiad gold. They put together a string of individual achievements, with Gukesh’s coronation as world champion being the pinnacle. From a distance, Nihal watched his pals make it to the top 10.
An urge to show that ‘he too can’ is one of the factors driving the player from Thrissur. “It’s a motivator, definitely,” Nihal’s coach Vishnu Prasanna told RevSportz. “He has similar abilities. He’s trying to see how he can do better in his own way. He’s quite confident that he’s also capable of it. He believes he can achieve the things his contemporaries have.”
The 21-year-old started working with Vishnu at the start of 2025. A Grandmaster himself and former coach of Gukesh, Vishnu said the plan was to explore avenues in some of the events. It worked. Nihal has more tricks up his sleeves now. Under pressure, he digs deep in a game and in a tournament. Vishnu has noticed improvement at a good pace. The coach, who has also seen a tendency to be inconsistent, is by and large okay with what they have done. He is optimistic about the World Cup.
“It’s an unpredictable tournament,” said Vishnu. “To be there as long as possible, that’s how we are looking at it. Okay, the ideal goal would be to go to the semi-finals or something. But it’s far away. We have an idea who the opponents might be, so we’ll try to go as far as possible.” Nihal reached the second round in his maiden World Cup in 2019. He lost in the third round in 2021 and fourth in 2023.
“We should try to go further than the past. He is improving rapidly, adding weapons and variety to his arsenal. He had a couple of bad tournaments also. So it’s not completely stable. He’s experimenting, something that he used to before we started working together. This year, the plan was to try new things as much as possible in the first half so that by the time the Grand Swiss and World Cup neared, we knew where we stand. I think we will see fewer experiments now,” said the 36-year-old coach.
Nihal gave a good account of himself at the Grand Swiss in Uzbekistan last month. It’s an open tournament, where the next round’s pairings are done after the day’s play. Not in exactly the same way, the World Cup is similar when it comes to not knowing who the next opponent is until the round is over. Grand Swiss should have been a good practice outing for someone targeting the big event. In 11 rounds, Nihal tallied seven to finish one point behind the winner at joint fifth. He participated in other open events also and won one.
“This format (World Cup) suits him. It’s a combination of classical, rapid and blitz. He’s pretty good at everything,” noted Vishnu. Known as Speed Demon for quick moves in shorter formats, Nihal had to slow down off the board to plot this. The situation demanded him to grit it out. After toiling away from the spotlight for months, he would like to think that the challenge he was waiting for is here.
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