CHENNAI: Just before the chess Olympiad in Mahabalipuram last year, India 'B', comprising D Gukesh, B Adhiban, R Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, Raunak Sadhwani and coach, RB Ramesh, met to decide the board order. All of them had legitimate arguments to play on the top board, such was their standing in the game. There was also an argument to play Gukesh, who had just broken 2680 in classical, in the 2nd or 3rd board. Unlike some of the others in that team, Gukesh is ultra-aggressive and proactive. While others like to be in control of the situation before planning skirmishes, Gukesh, 16 at the time, liked to create chaos, go for wins from the outset.
Wins, the debate went, may be hard to come by on the top board. The Tamil Nadu teen, though, refused to get along with the idea. Ramesh picks up the story. "When we were discussing board orders, there was a suggestion; should Gukesh play top board or 2nd or 3rd because he can score wins and scoring wins with the top board could be difficult," Ramesh tells this daily. "But he said 'I want to play top board'. He was supremely confident. By the time he was coming to the Olympiad, he was already displaying his self-belief."
At the Olympiad, he displayed that self-belief multiple times as he wiped the floor with Grandmasters twice his age and having 5x his experience. He began the tournament by winning eight on the trot before pocketing individual gold for top board. Judit Polgar, one of the legends of the board game, couldn't help but wonder at the teen phenom. The Hungarian, at the Olympiad as a pundit, was positively gushing whenever she spoke about Gukesh. "He played amazingly," was how she summed up his tournament.
What also caught the eye during the tournament was the way he was moving across the board. None of the stealth that top GMs usually employ. It was all-action, front-foot go-big-or-go-home (he usually went big) tactics that yielded him results. Ramesh sings from the same hymn sheet. "Chess-wise, his style is very aggressive. He and (Argun) Erigaisi, both of them are very aggressive, they want to win every game," Ramesh explains. "Very proactive. Not reactive or conservative in approach and mindset. They believe in themselves that they can win. Very confident and they take a lot of risks. With most players, even if they are confident, they wouldn't take too many risks. But these two take a lot of risks."
When you consider all of this, it's not really a surprise to note that the 17-year-old breached past Viswanathan Anand's mark to become the highest-rated Indian classical player at the ongoing FIDE World Cup on Thursday. Save for a brief while in 2016, Anand has had ownership of that title since July 1986. This kind of gives us a peek into two things; first, Anand married longevity with greatness so while other GMs kept coming, he was always better than them. Gukesh is still so young his parents were kids when Anand first climbed the ladder of greatness.
What has enabled Gukesh's rise and rise? Dedication to the cause. That dedication to the cause was visible in the way he put his head down and prepared for a post-pandemic future even during the initial lockdown. His coach Vishnu Prasanna, who has been with him for nearly the last half-a-dozen years, isn't surprised by the path his ward is on. "He wasn't happy about that (the absence of over-the-board events)," Prasanna tells this daily. "But he was preparing himself for when the doors eventually opened. He reacted well after that. Whatever preparation he did during that time, it helped him when the tournaments started to happen."
What was it that he did? "Expand his repertoire, he had a narrow repertoire when the lockdown happened," Prasanna remembers. "He was working on his weaknesses, not really chilling... working on these things when you have no tournaments to look forward to can be very challenging but he did it."
When he's not featuring in tournaments, Gukesh can spend as many as 10 hours doing something related to chess -- playing it, solving questions, working on openings, studying positions. That's before you take into account the mental and the physical -- yoga as well as spending time at the gym -- work he puts in. "He took an overall view of his game, mental, physical as well as chess. That is the secret to his discipline and consistency. I have worked mostly online with him since January, he has also received support from Vishy's (Viswanathan Anand) Academy. They handle most of the opening work. I send him questions to work on and we discuss it afterwards. He does meditation and yoga in the mornings before we start. After the Olympiad for a two-month period, we worked between 10.00 AM to 4.00 PM. He would go to the gym after that. We would reconvene after that to exchange files. After that, we would work independently before we touch base next morning," Saravanan adds.
The two also came to an understanding. Gukesh's bad days in tournaments should be good days for most players. "Early on, what we discussed was even if 'we have a bad day... shouldn't be that bad. Your bad day should be somebody else's good day'. It's the kind of thinking we had. Now he doesn't have so many bad days as such. That is what has made him stay at the top, he's very consistent with results."
The soft-spoken Olympiad medallist, who plays card games like Avalon to wind down, has already achieved one of the two main targets they had discussed at the start of the year. Top 10. Next? Qualifying for the Candidates. He will begin his 3rd round at the FIDE World Cup on Saturday with the singular aim of achieving that within the next two weeks.
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