CHENNAI: Last week, D Gukesh was in Katowice to play a one-day, one-off six match Blitz tournament against Jan Krzysztof Duda. A week before that, Nihal Sarin and Arjun Erigaisi were involved in the inaugural eSports World Cup in Saudi Arabia. In the third week of July, R Praggnanandhaa featured in the fourth leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour at Las Vegas. India's Vidit Gujrathi and Erigaisi also featured in the event (M Pranesh lost in the qualifiers).
In isolation, this may not mean much. But when taken together, it speaks of chess' incredible recent burst in terms of formats other than Classical. There are several reasons for this but one thing which separates the board game from other sports is that most of the top players play everything in chess. Fischer Random in one month? Check. Grind of Classical three weeks later? Signed up. Rapid and Blitz a few days later? Tickets booked. Two young, talented players coming together in an exhibition a fortnight later? Done. It's like Kylian Mbappe signing up for indoor sevens or Jasprit Bumrah playing Max60.
Even as the third edition of the Chennai Grand Masters began on Thursday, a tournament close to Gukesh's heart, the teen was in Poland to play Duda, the 2021 World Cup winner who was one of the Indian's seconds at last year's World Championship.
Even as chess' elite have never had it this good in terms of invites, it has kind of led to a debate on whether this is unsustainable in terms of preparation, giving adequate time for training and so on.
Viswanathan Anand, who mixed Blitz and Rapid with the rigours of Classical when he was a fully active player on the circuit, said he found no issues with it. "The simplest way to say it is that they shouldn't rule out any format mentally," the five-time world champion told select media on the sidelines of the fourth day of the Chennai Grand Masters. "In a sense, you don't probably have good results in all the formats, in all the years but I don't think you're assured of one format either. I mean Gukesh has had a bad Classical (meet) in Romania, for instance. I think when one misfires, you should be able to compete in the other. So, you should try to be competitive in all. Maybe you won't succeed, but it's worth it."
Anand himself is no stranger to adapting to times like this. Even if he has stopped playing Classical chess for all practical purposes, the five-time world champion has faced off against Argentina's Faustino Oro (nicknamed Chessi), the 11-year-old said to have a big future. When asked if he saw himself as playing a lot of one-off exhibition tournaments like that, he said: "No, I dont see myself settling in for one genre. Having made the point that, I should try to be good at other formats. I should follow it myself."
Never short of a quip or two, the FIDE administrator was firmly tongue in cheek when replying to a query on the kind of advice he would give Gukesh to ensure the latter levels don't drop. "I think 'mera pass panch hai (I have five titles) is a good starting point," he said with a smile. "I think he knows what to do.
"Sport is evolving very fast, new formats, new things. I think the only thing I can do is if they ask, I can describe how I faced a certain situation and then it would be their job to convert that. We are not comparing the same thing anymore."
Sunday's results (Round 4)
Masters: Karthikeyan Murali bt Jorden van Foreest, Ray Robson drew with Awonder Liang, Nihal Sarin bt Arjun Erigaisi, V Pranav drew with Vidit Gujrathi, Vincent Keymer drew with Anish Giri. Challengers: Diptayan Ghosh bt GB Harshavardhan, P Iniyan bt Aryan Chopra, Adhiban Baskaran drew with M Pranesh, Leon Mendonca bt D Harika, Abhimanyu Puranik bt R Vaishali.