CHENNAI: Just before the 2013 World Chess Championship, Viswanathan Anand caused quite the stir by naming his seconds in the pre-event meet. “K Sasikiran, Sandipan (Chanda), (Radoslav) Wojtaszek and (Peter) Leko are my first seconds,” the then defending champion had said.
The ball, then, was in Magnus Carlsen’s court. Would the Norwegian return the favour by publically revealing his seconds? “I appreciate Mr Anand’s openness about his team,” he had said. “And I’m not going to return his favour.” Normalcy was quickly restored for elite chess players seldom reveal the identity of their seconds before an important event.
For seconds are the army of backroom staffers working to bring home the title. Complete secrecy is the only name of the game. During an interaction with this daily, R B Ramesh, coach of R Vaishali and R Praggnanadhaa (the siblings will be in action at the Candidates from Thursday in Toronto), plead the Fifth whenever he felt it would be in danger of revealing details of the multiple camps they had in the lead up.
He refused to even reveal the dates of the camp. “Don’t want to go too much into the dates; I will just say we have done our bit,” he said. “We have prepared professionally. Everyone will have done the same.” It has since been reported that Praggnanandhaa, who qualified for the Candidates (an elite eight-player event which will identify the Challenger for the world title match) has hired Peter Svidler, a former World No. 4.
V Saravanan, an IM who works at chess.com, takes this daily through why secrecy is important. “It’s existed for a long time because you do not want to give your opponents the smallest of clues,” he tells this daily. “Let’s take Svidler’s case. He’s a legend for his Gruenfeld Defense with black pieces. He’s known for his dynamism. Those are the kind of clues you don’t want your opponents to know.” The aspect of secrecy — almost akin to an espionage operation — isn’t just unique to Ramesh.
Gukesh’s coach, Vishnu Saravanan, also maintained silence when he was asked about the event (the 17-year-old will be helped by Grzegorz Gajweski during the meet). The IM explained further. “Gajewski is known to be an expert in openings (the first phase of the game).”
Koneru Humpy, one of two Indian women in the field, flat out refused to answer questions about the event. Vidit Gujrathi (one of three Indian men in the field) did of his two members ahead of the tournament (Surya Shekhar Ganguly and Daniele Vocaturo) but said he preferred to hide the identities of the others in the team. Candidates is a gruelling three week event with 14 games of Classical Chess.