27-05-2025
- Business
- New Indian Express
Inside the chess world's race to ace the Indian market
STAVANGER: The FIDE World Cup is scheduled to be held in India later this year. The third season of the Global Chess League (GCL), owned and conducted by an Indian company, may be held in Chennai in December. Another edition of the Chennai Grandmasters, India's only super tournament, is scheduled to be held in August. It may be bigger and better than the first two.
Viswanathan Anand, a former five-time world champion, is one of FIDE's top officials. D Gukesh is the reigning world champion. Arjun Erigaisi, now in the top five, had to play and win a lot of open tournaments. These days, Erigaisi gets invited to a lot of top-tier events; an indication of his standing. Likewise with Aravindh Chithambaram, R Praggnanandhaa and so on.
In short, if you are an Indian — or an Indian entity — involved in chess, this is boom time. Everybody wants in on the gravy train or the 'Indian market'. It, of course, wasn't like this before.
"The pandemic changed it from an Indian (chess) perspective," says Srinath Narayanan, a GM who has organised several events over the last few years. "Indian players were getting invites to the big events but not at the level we are seeing now. But you can also understand why they are getting invites to the super tournaments now, there are two of them in the top five."
The 'two of them' Narayanan refers to are featuring at Norway Chess —Gukesh and Erigaisi. Here's Kjell Madland, the tournament's founder and tournament director. "India is so important," Madland says. "It's a very big country and it's growing... the economy, technology and also they have so many young players. It's very important to have connections with Indian players and the market in India."
Madland and his team at Stavanger, the annual destination for Norway Chess, have already held exploratory talks with stakeholders in India apropos holding events in India under their umbrella. It's not hard to imagine why they would want to do so. It could be a case of future-proofing the brand in a post Magnus Carlsen world (the World No. 1 could well stop playing Classical chess from next year).
"In the first year (2013), Vishy (Viswanathan) Anand played and he was the world champion. Even from the beginning, we knew India was important." That kind of sentiment is reflected in the number of Indians in the draw this year. There are four (two each in the Open and women's), a record for Indian players at the tournament in its 13-year history.
Narayanan has a theory as to why that may be the case across invitational closed competitions. "There are a fair few players in the top-10 and top-20 so they have got there with the way they have performed. Take both Erigaisi and Gukesh, for example. They have won a lot of open tournaments and now are getting invited to super events fairly regularly."
It's not just the Indian players who have been front and centre. In 2024, the Tamil Nadu government as well as the All India Chess Federation (AICF) submitted two separate bids to host the World Championship. A year earlier, the TN government organised a super tournament to help one of Gukesh or Erigaisi to qualify for the Candidates via the circuit (the former capitalised).
Narayanan, tasked with the role of bringing that competition to life, explains. "Chess is a difficult event to get sponsors on but I would say it has been better to get sponsors on board in 2024 and now. Because, in 2023, it existed only as a concept."
Young Indian GMs, including the likes of Praggnanandhaa and Gukesh, are at the top of the wish-list because of their social media followings. While appearance fees aren't big in chess, organisers of the big events, especially in 2025, may prefer to get on board a player who has a bigger social media footprint. "If you are looking at two similarly rated players but have only a slot, their social media accounts can play a role," Narayanan says. It's like this because there is the added element of the tournament receiving potentially more eyeballs on social media.
Wednesday's pairings: Open: Magnus Carlsen vs Wei Yi, Fabiano Caruana vs Arjun Erigaisi, D Gukesh vs Hikaru Nakamura.
Women: Koneru Humpy vs Sara Khadem, Ju Wenjun vs R Vaishali, Lei Tingjie vs Anna Muzychuk.
