CHENNAI: R Praggnanandhaa is on a roll at the FIDE World Cup in Baku. He drew against World No 1 Magnus Carlsen on Tuesday and is set to play the second classical game on Wednesday. Miles away, in Chennai, his coach RB Ramesh has been following each and every move of his online.
During a conversation ahead of the semifinals against Fabio Caruana, which Praggnanandhaa won, he revealed how they keep in touch. what did he think about when he met the 18-year-old for the first time and more. Excerpts from the concluding part of the interview...
So what did you see in Praggnanandhaa when he first came to you?
When we started working probably nine or 10 years ago. He was already a good player. He was, I believe, the world Under-8 champion. But U-8, generally there is not much competition, but he was also eight, like every other child. And back then, his (elder) sister (Vaishali) was stronger than Pragg. She had probably like 200 or 300 points above Pragg. They learned their chess from Bloom Chess Academy before coming to me. The academy has done a really good job.
One thing they have is the right work ethic. I would say that their heart was in the game. They both really loved chess and they both were extremely ambitious. They wanted to be the world champion and they were also very talented. But talent is something that is available in abundance. It's not such a rare phenomenon, but this passion, extraordinary passion, hardworking ability and willingness to pay the price (for a bigger prize) is great. Usually, what happens, when people pursue excellence in some field, they are focused largely on the target. They want to get it by any means. They miss out on the learning process.
To learn effectively, they have to do certain things, they have to go through a process and the process is more important than the outcome. If they go through the process in the proper way, they will make a significant improvement in their strength, which will guarantee good results in the long run. They were very focused on the process from a young age. No wonder they are doing so well.
Coming to this World Cup, how do you see it as a coach?
We are in touch. I was doing a camp in Sweden with the former world champion (Magnus) Carlsen's club. I'm working with them to create a chess ecosystem and a training culture in the Nordic countries. So we have camps every few months and this camp was arranged months in advance, so I couldn't cancel it. And I also tell Pragg to be very independent and that he should not be dependent on anyone for his chess preparations during major tournaments. In the last two years, we have worked a lot in this direction. Now, he's very independent and can take care of himself, he can take major decisions like which openings I should play. What should be my approach, how to manage his time? He's doing all this by himself largely. We keep in touch through WhatsApp.
When he's playing the games, I'm generally watching it online and checking it with powerful computers. We have a cloud database where I store all this information. When he finishes the game and comes to the room, he will have ready access to it. Yes, I'm remotely trying to help him as much as I can.
You were talking about spending time, screen time watching movies on mobiles… Does this particular habit affect the chess game of chess?
Very much. I have worked with children years ago. I worked with some of the players who are seniors nowadays. I have seen the attention span of the children declining over a period of time. The attention span of the current generation is probably 20% of what it was in a child of the same age 10-15 years ago. They are getting access to a lot of screen time. Be watching serials on TV, movies and so on. They are having their own phones or tablets or laptops.
They are very active on social media, chatting with friends and they're also playing video games. I've seen many chess players who are addicted to video games and very smart children who could have become very strong players, but because they could not restrain or could not control their cravings they cave in.
Is there any age you peak in chess? In different sports, you peak at different age…
This is very hard to say in chess because, in a physical sport, every human being around the world beats anywhere from the world. When we are young teenagers, our muscles are not strong, our bones have not grown fully. It's very difficult to excel in physical sport. When you are young, the strength is not there, the power is not there and the experience is not there. That comes probably after 18-plus.
In chess, I started at 12. And I became an International Master at the age of 19. It was at that time the youngest in India…They used to say 'he became an IM at such a young age'. People were doing it probably in their early twenties and they're becoming Grandmasters after they were 30. But now we see youngsters like Pragg and D Gukesh, they became IMs at the age of 10. When Pragg became an IM, it was the world record. And he became a GM at the age of 12, which was the second youngest in the world.
Within a few months, Gukesh broke both records and within a few months, another child from the US broke the record. These three children in a very short span of time broke each other's record. They also have shown that excellence is possible at a very young age in chess because you don't need the physical strength… just the intellectual strength is required and they have shown that the young human brain is very powerful and as good, if not better than that at a very young age. I believe like, probably around five or six would be a good time to learn the game.
Starting at a very young age, is it possible that Praggnanandhaa may lose interest in the sport by 30?
Yeah, it is possible. If you eat idly every day for breakfast, you will soon start hating it. It is possible because he has been playing chess from a very young age. He has been practising a lot. He is breathing chess, basically eating chess, sleeping chess, and walking chess. So it is possible. It does take a toll. When you have devoted yourself to one thing, how long can you do that?
I'm also curious, I just hope we can continue because we can see Carlsen, who is the current world champion, he's 32, and he's already lost interest in standard time control. He said he is playing just because he has never won the World Cup. It's like one box missing from his house. He hates playing in standard time control and being the world champion. He wants to play the shorter time format. That's what chess has done to him. So everyone reacts in one case and I hope Pragg can withstand this longer.