The interim budget speech had a reference to India’s success in chess. To quote, “Chess prodigy and our number one ranked player Praggnanandhaa put up a stiff fight against the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsson in 2023. Today, India has over 80 chess grandmasters compared to little over 20 in 2010.”
In chess, as in other sports, participation can be individual, or as a team. Team performance can be gauged from Chess Olympiad rankings, a biennial event, last held in Chennai in 2022. In the open section, with Russia and China not participating, two Indian teams stood third and fourth, the first two positions being taken by Uzbekistan and Armenia. In the women’s section, India was third, behind Ukraine and Georgia. But chess is identified more as an individual sport.
The strength of an individual chess player can be gauged through titles, or ratings, both decided by FIDE (the International Chess Federation). As titles go, we have Grandmaster (GM) at the top. Many years ago (late 1920s, early 1930s), there was an extremely strong chess player named Mir Sultan Khan. He was from Punjab, the Pakistan part. At the time, he beat the best in the world and recently, FIDE posthumously conferred the title of honorary GM on him. It is a different matter that FIDE started titles only in 1950.
The number of GMs has increased exponentially and there are over 2000 GMs in the world. The number of Indian GMs has also increased exponentially. India’s first GM was Viswanathan Anand, way back in 1988. Today, as the speech mentions, there are 84 (only Russia and the US have more). Ratings are a parallel measure of strength. The higher, the better. A GM will have a rating of at least 2500. However, with some 2000 GMs, there is variation in strength within them and those with a rating above 2700 are loosely referred to as super GMs. The top 10 active Indian chess players have an average rating of 2703, bettered only by the US. For women, the corresponding rating is 2429, bettered only by China.
You might find numbers floating around on the internet. But check the vintage of those numbers. They might be dated and the Indian track record in chess is changing very fast. FIDE publishes new ratings on the last day of every month. Pending that, we have what are known as live ratings. These can change at the end of the month.
At the time of writing this article, as is only to be expected, Magnus Carlsen was at the top of the live rating list, with a rating of 2830. There are different versions of chess — rapid, blitz and so on, a bit like ODIs and T20. The purist will swear by the classic version, similar to test cricket. The rating I have just cited is for classic. Who is the greatest of all time, a question that rages across sports. The best metric is the distance between that person and number two and the time period over which this difference lasts. Every chess player will have a favourite — Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer. But, by any objective metric, Carlsen wins hands down.
On those live ratings, positions 12 to 15 in the world are nothing short of amazing. Number 2 is Viswanathan Anand (2748), 13 is Gukesh (2747.1), 14 is R. Praggnanandhaa (2747.0) and 15 is Vidit Gujrathi (2747.0). Number 18 is Arjun Erigaisi (2736.1). Anand plays rarely now so his live rating doesn’t fluctuate that much (Anand’s highest-ever rating was 2820.7 in 2011). Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman wasn’t wrong when she said that Praggnanandhaa was (is) India’s number one ranked player. But it’s changed since then and does so all the time. What’s more remarkable is how young these players are. Only Gujrathi is slightly older. This becomes clearer if one looks at the world rankings of juniors (under-20). In the top 10, we also have Nihal Sarin and Raunak Sadhwani. That depth is not that marked for women. For a long time, we only had Koneru Humpy and Dronavalli Harika. But Vaishali Rameshbabu now figures in the top 20 in the world.
Will we have an Indian world chess champion (after Anand) and when? The current World Chess Champion is Ding Liren and for women, it is Ju Wenjun, both from China. In April 2024, there will be a candidates tournament. Eight players will vie for the right to challenge Ding Liren for the crown, with a parallel process for Ju Wenjun. In the list of eight, we have three from India – Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa and Vidit. This itself is remarkable. In the women’s list of eight, we have Humpy and Vaishali.
For the men, are they ready? Carlsen no longer plays in these world championships and Ding Liren is distinctly out of form. Therefore, anything is possible. For the open, for some certainty, one would need a rating of around 2780, or thereabouts. That’s some distance away and Gukesh and Praggnanandhaa have youth on their side. If not in this cycle, perhaps in the next one. What’s amazing about this Indian phenomenon is its depth, reminiscent of the Russians decades ago. There are reasons for this rise and no, it hasn’t happened inadvertently.
The author is the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Council and a well-known Sanskrit scholar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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