85 Grandmasters And Counting: How Chess Rose To Prominence (Once Again) In India

Last Updated:December 13, 2024, 19:53 IST

From Gukesh’s win, to Arjun Erigaisi’s historic landmark, to India’s dominance at the Chess Olympiad, chess has witnessed an unparalleled rise to prominence in the subcontinent

D Gukesh was crowned the youngest world champion in chess history. (Image: X)

The prodigal son of Indian Chess has finally reached the peak. 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju etched his name into the pantheon of greats on Thursday as he downed Ding Liren in Game 14 of the 2024 World Chess Championships.

Gukesh’s historic win made him the youngest-ever World Champion, ousting the legendary Garry Kasparov, whilst also becoming the second Indian to hold the World Title, only after his idol Viswanathan Anand.

Whilst Gukesh has achieved the absolute ultimate feat in the world of chess, we would be remiss to mention and celebrate all the other young Indians who have catapulted the nation into becoming arguably the strongest contingent in the sport.

From Gukesh’s win, to Arjun Erigaisi’s historic landmark, to India’s dominance at the Chess Olympiad, chess has witnessed an unparalleled rise to prominence in the subcontinent: an occcurrence that was years, and perhaps decades in the making, spearheaded by youngsters galore who have been making waves in the sport.

Ask Garry Kasparov himself. Earlier this year, following Gukesh’s sensational outing at the 2024 Candidates, where the Indian broke Kasparov’s 40-year-old record to become the youngest-ever world title challenger, the Russian GM highlighted the unstoppable forces of Indian chess on the global stage.

“The Indian earthquake in Toronto is the culmination of the shifting tectonic plates in the chess world as the 17-year-old Gukesh D will face the Chinese champion Ding Liren for the highest title. The “children” of Vishy Anand are on the loose!” chess legend Garry Kasparov said in his congratulatory social media post after the tournament.

India sure has taken chess by storm, with four Indians taking up spots in the top 20 rankings in the men’s division (with 3 of them in the top 10), while four more making their mark in the top 20 of the women’s division.

Indian GMs In Top 20 World Rankings (Of Their Respective Divisions in Classical Chess)

Men:

• Arjun Erigaisi (World #4; ELO Rating: 2801)
• Gukesh Dommaraju (World #5; ELO Rating: 2783)
• Viswanathan Anand (World #10; ELO Rating: 2750)
• Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu (World #17; ELO Rating: 2737)

Women:

• Koneru Humpy (World #6; ELO Rating: 2523)
• Divya Deshmukh (World #14; ELO Rating: 2490)
• Harika Dronavalli (World #16; ELO Rating: 2489)
• Vaishali Rameshbabu (World #18; ELO Rating: 2476)

In fact, if we look at the numbers, we can see that over the last decade, the total number of Grandmasters in India went from 36 in 2014 to 85 in 2024, a two-fold increase in the number of GMs India had previously produced.

What has prompted this sudden burst of dominance in chess though? Well, there are mulitple factors which have been at play in tandem, all of which have resulted in India seeing a spike in chess prodigies.

The COVID Boom

It’s no mystery that millions around the world were left locked inside their safe abodes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This in essence led to a rise in online activity across all facets of life, and one certain facet that saw an unforeseen boom in popularity was chess.

The rise in viewership and registration across multiple online platforms for the sport during the pandemic was unparalleled.

In fact, the gaming platform Chess.com had nearly 30 million members before the pandemic broke out in March, 2020. This grew to 57 million within the span of a single year. The number went over 75 million as of November, 2021.

The continued growth left such plaforms stunned, with chess.com themselves issuing a statement, addressing the same.

“On December 31, we had seven million active members on Chess.com in a single day for the first time. On January 20, we had ten million active members. Traffic on Chess.com has nearly doubled since the beginning of December, and our servers are struggling, especially during peak hours,” a statement from Chess.com stated in early 2023.

This boom in online activity ignited a never-before seen craze for the sport, leading to various new players rising all across the world.

Chess and Popular Media

The Queen’s Gambit was released in October, 2020, and the show inadvertently also led to heightened interest in the sport as a result of the same.

The rise of online streaming and channels dedicated to chess also played a massive role in sustaining and adding to the continued popularity of the board game.

Chess became an e-sport during the pandemic. urrent World No.3 GM Hikaru Nakamura for example started streaming his games on Twitch in March, 2020. The chess champion had about 400,000 followers at the time. He now has a growing audience of well over a million people.

YouTube channels such as GothamChess and the highly-popular ChessBase India also played a massive role in cultivating interest and nurturing the same, with relentless coverage and educational content on the game.

In fact, ChessBase India, led by IM Sagar Shah and his wife Amruta Mohal, also serves as the distributor of Chess software in the country. The influence they have had in shaping the landscape of chess in the past decade is so deep-rooted that earlier this year, the duo announced that they had raised over INR 10 lakh during the runtime of the recently concluded 45th Chess Olympiad in Hungary, where India nabbed Gold in both the Men’s and Women’s divisions, to support growing chess players in the country.

As more Indian GMs and IMs, such as the likes of Vidit Gujrathi and Tania Sachdev, were involved in coming together with entities such as ChessBase themselves, an ecosystem for education and entertainment in chess was nurtured, which has contributed to the growing talent pool in the nation.

Vishy, RB Ramesh Leading The Charge 

Now, we have covered how the talent pool was expanded in the nation. But, when it came to grooming the talent and ensuring they achieve their potential, it was the persistent efforts put forth by Indian Grandmasters such as the legendary Viswanathan Anand and RB Ramesh that shone the brightest, allowing their proteges to shine brighter.

Sine 2008, Grandmaster RB Ramesh and his wife, Women’s Grand Master Aarthie Ramaswamy, have been running ChessGurukul in Chennai.

Praggnanandhaa, who became a Grandmaster at 12, and his sister and Grandmaster, Vaishali, are from there, and even the now-world champion D Gukesh himself had previously trained under the tutelage of GM Vishnu Prasanna who had once overseen the academy.

But, the most ambitious of all endeavours was born from the man who sparked it all for chess in India: Viswanathan Anand.

The five-time World Champion was inspired by the Botvinnik School of Chess and took it upon himself to assemble the workings for a world-class facility in his motherland. So was born the Westbridge Anand Chess Academy, also known as WACA.

Founded in 2020, WACA has a powerful core group of coaches, including Poland’s Grzegorz Gajewski, who is currently Gukesh’s head coach and many other acclaimed players such as Grandmaster Sandipan Chanda, Russian Grandmaster Artur Yusupov and Belarusian-Israeli Grandmaster Boris Gelfand.

WACA now hones the likes of all three GMs previously mentioned — Pragg, Vaishali and Gukesh — acting with Westbridge Capital acting as their sponsor as well.

The advent of such private institutions have undoubtedly been a major factor in nurturing the growth of chess talent in the nation. But, we would also be remiss to not highlight the role schools have been playing in developing chess as well –most notably, Velammal Vidyalaya in Chennai, which has been home to 15 out of 29 Grandmasters from Tamil Nadu.