By Atreyo Mukhopadhyay in Goa
As the FIDE World Cup approaches the business end, the report card from an Indian perspective doesn’t make for happy reading. There were seven from the country in the top 25 in the field of 206 players. Six of them were rated 2700 or above. The top three seeds were Indians. Heading into the quarterfinals, Arjun Erigaisi is the lone one standing. In the last 16, Pentala Harikrishna was the only other player carrying the Tricolour.
That is not a great story. World champion D Gukesh and last edition’s runner-up R Praggnanandhaa were eliminated early. Vidit Gujrathi, Aravindh Chithambaram and Nihal Sarin too suffered premature exits. All of them lost to players rated below them. Raunak Sadhwani and Leon Luke Mendonca were the other players rated fairly highly, who failed to reach the stage they were expected to. This constitutes below-par performance overall.
This also explains why all sports are affairs of uncertainties, glorious or inglorious. Ratings and world rankings matter in chess of course. But they only indicate rather than telling the full story. It’s possible that some of the players are not that highly-rated because they play less frequently and don’t accrue that many rating points. Of the eight surviving in the contest, just two — Erigaisi and Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan — are rated above 2700. This means that 20 players in that elite rating bracket are out, including big names like Ian Nepomniachtchi, Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Levon Aronian.
It also reiterates how things don’t unfold according to what the ratings suggest. In the previous edition of the meet in Azerbaijan, four Indians had made it to the quarterfinals. Only Gukesh was ranked inside the top 15 in the world at that point in time. Vidit, Praggnanandhaa and Erigaisi were outside the top 25. Vidit had made it to the quarterfinals in 2021 also. Like they made a mockery of reputations back then, the same has happened to most of them in Goa. They were on the receiving end of upsets this time around.
Erigaisi’s bull run and Harikrishna’s spirited effort notwithstanding, this World Cup has seen more heartbreaks than joy for the Indians. They came to this coastal state with reputations to protect and make. What they ended up achieving was actually the opposite. That is chess and sport. One never knows what lies ahead at which bend of the road. What may appear to be a regulation speed-breaker can turn out to be a major roadblock.
In the last eight, there are two from Uzbekistan and one each from Mexico, Germany, India, USA, China and Russia. Erigaisi is up against Wei Yi of China, who is ranked 11th in the world with a formidable ELO rating of 2752. The Indian is sixth with 2769. However, as this competition has shown time and again, these numbers are only an indicator of relative strength and in no way a predictor of what may happen. Erigaisi has to be at his best when the game begins today.
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